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Thursday, 24 December 2009

Types of strategies

Marketing strategies may differ depending on the unique situation of the individual business. However there are a number of ways of categorizing some generic strategies. A brief description of the most common categorizing schemes is presented below:

•    Strategies based on market dominance - In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are four types of market dominance strategies:
  • Leader
  • Challenger
  • Follower
  • Nicher
•    Porter generic strategies - strategy on the dimensions of strategic scope and strategic strength. Strategic scope refers to the market penetration while strategic strength refers to the firm’s sustainable competitive advantage. The generic strategy framework (porter 1984) comprises two alternatives each with two alternative scopes. These are Differentiation and low-cost leadership each with a dimension of Focus-broad or narrow.
  • Product differentiation
  • Market segmentation
•    Innovation strategies - This deals with the firm's rate of the new product development and business model innovation. It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation. There are three types:
  • Pioneers
  • Close followers
  • Late followers
•    Growth strategies - In this scheme we ask the question, “How should the firm grow?”. There are a number of different ways of answering that question, but the most common gives four answers:
  • Horizontal integration
  • Vertical integration
  • Diversification
  • Intensification
A more detailed scheme uses the categories :
  • Prospector
  • Analyzer
  • Defender
  • Reactor
  • Marketing warfare strategies - This scheme draws parallels between marketing strategies and military strategies.

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