Four Generic Strategy Alternatives for Marketing
- Cost Leadership. The cost leadership strategy is a high volume, low margin strategy. Cost leaders offer lower prices...
- Differentiation. The differentiation strategy involves creating unique products that are different from any other...
- Cost Focus. Like the cost leadership strategy, the cost focus strategy aims to offer...
Full Answer
What are the 4 types of generic strategies?
4 Types of Generic Strategies. The 4 generic strategies are; Cost Leadership Strategy. Differentiation Strategy. Broad Differentiation Strategy. Focused Differentiation Strategy. Focus Strategy.
Is there such a thing as a generic business strategy?
Examining business-level strategy in terms of generic strategies has limitations. Firms that follow a particular generic strategy tend to share certain features. For example, one way that cost leaders generally keep costs low is by not spending much on advertising. Not every cost leader, however, follows this path.
What are strategic alternatives?
Strategic Alternatives are developed to sets direction in which human and material resources of business will be applied for a greater chance of achieving selected goals. The strategy is a comprehensive concept and, for this reason, it is often used in different ways.
What are the four generic alternatives to cost-effective marketing?
Four generic alternatives include market penetration, market development, product development and diversification. Market penetration is a strategy aimed at building sales among customers who already purchase the firms' products. It assumes that these buyers can also be convinced to buy the same goods in larger volume or with increased frequency.
Market Penetration
Market penetration is a strategy aimed at building sales among customers who already purchase the firms' products. It assumes that these buyers can also be convinced to buy the same goods in larger volume or with increased frequency. For example, bookstores try to entice readers to buy multiple books at once.
Market Development
If the firm believes there is untapped potential in the marketplace for its products, it may choose a market development strategy. This means pursuing new customers for existing products.
Product Development
This alternative means creating new products for current customers. It enables marketers to build on its knowledge of existing buyers, as well as build on present networks of salespeople, vendors and distributors.
Diversification
A diversification strategy is generally considered the most risky alternative, because it involves both creating new products and seeking new customers. Marketers must carefully study the competition as well as the needs and wants of people they have not previously served.
What are generic strategies?
There are, however, four generic strategies that a business can use to create a general outline of its marketing strategy. When marketing a product you can target the broad market or a niche, and you can compete on the basis of price or differentiation.
What is differentiation strategy?
The differentiation strategy involves creating unique products that are different from any other offerings. When a company develops a unique product that consumers want, it is able to charge a premium price for it. This means that companies who use the differentiation strategy generally sell products at a higher price.
How to develop differentiated offerings?
In order to develop differentiated offerings a company needs to invest heavily in research and development. The associated costs of research can make the strategy difficult for a small business.
What is cost focus strategy?
Like the cost leadership strategy, the cost focus strategy aims to offer products to consumers at low prices. But unlike the cost leadership strategy, which aims at the entire market, the cost focus strategy focuses on a limited niche. For instance, a business might manufacture scissors designed for left-handed people. The company might not have the lowest prices for scissors, but it could still be a cost leader in the left-handed niche. Because the cost focus strategy caters to a smaller niche, it is ideally suited to small businesses with limited resources.
What is generic strategy?
The generic strategies are labeled as the basic competitive strategy options for a business firm. Such competitive strategies always aim at securing competitive advantages over the competitors m the marketplace. Business firms, endeavor to achieve competitive advantages by giving customers superior value, which’ performing value chain activities ...
Why are generic strategies labeled as generic strategies?
Because of their susceptibility to common use by all business enterprises, they are labeled as generic strategies. These are, in fact, basic types of competitive strategies.
What are the three types of competitive strategies?
Michael Porter originally identified three types of competitive strategies: Cost Leadership Strategy, Differentiation Strategy, and Focus Strategy. The generic strategies can be applied in any business organization irrespective of the size and nature of products.
Can a manufacturing company use generic strategies?
A manufacturing company may decide to employ any one of the generic strategies, or it may opt for a combination of more than one strategy. The most important thing is that to be successful with using generic strategies, the company must keep a constant eye on the developments in the environment so that it can regularly align its sources ...
What are generic strategies?
These three are: cost leadership, differentiation and focus.
What is focus strategy?
The 'focus' strategy involves focusing on a narrow, defined segment of the market, also called a 'niche' segment. For example, Porche markets to the particular segment that likes fast and expensive cars and can afford it.
Can a male and female come under the target market?
Though both males and females can come under the target market for a given product but it is also possible that the share of one gender may surpass the share of another gender in the company’s target market.
Where is an operating strategy formulated?
Operating strategy is formulated at the operating units of an organization. A company may develop operating strategy, as an instance, for its factory, sates territory or small sections within a department.
What is strategy making?
Strategy-making is involved with the identification of the ways that an organization can undertake to achieve the performance targets, weaken the competitors, achieve competitive advantage and ensure the long-term survival of the organization.
How many levels of strategy are there in a diversified company?
In a diversified company, a company having different lines of business under one umbrella, strategies are initiated at four levels. The strategies at each level of the organization are known by the name of the level. 4 levels of strategy are; Corporate level strategy. Business level strategy.
What is competitive advantage?
And competitive advantage comes from strategies that lead to some uniqueness in the marketplace. Winning competitive strategies are grounded in sustainable competitive advantage. Examples of the competitive strategy include differentiation strategy, low-cost strategy, and focus or market-niche strategy.
What is business level strategy?
A business-level strategy is the set of strategic alternatives from which an organization chooses as it conducts business in a particular industry or market. Such alternatives help the organization to focus its efforts on each industry or market in a targeted fashion.
What are the characteristics of a strategic plan?
The following are some of the most important characteristics of strategic plans: 1 They are long-term in nature and place an organization within its external environment. 2 They are comprehensive and cover a wide range of organizational activities. 3 They integrate guide and control organizational activities for the immediate and long-range future. 4 They set the boundaries for managerial decision making. Since strategic plans are the primary documents of an organization all managerial decisions are required to be consistent with its goals. Strategic plans, thus, set forth the long-term objectives, intermediate objectives and main purpose or the basic role of an organization.
What is the success of a competitive strategy?
The success of a competitive strategy depends on the company’s capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses in its competitors’ capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. In doing business, companies confront a lot of strategic issues. Management has to address all these issues effectively to survive in the marketplace.
What is generic strategy?
A generic strategy is a general way of positioning a firm within an industry. Focusing on generic strategies allows executives to concentrate on the core elements of firms’ business-level strategies. The most popular set of generic strategies is based on the work of Professor Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School ...
Why is it important to understand generic strategies?
Understanding the differences that underlie generic strategies is important because different generic strategies offer different value propositions to customers. A firm focusing on cost leadership will have a different value chain configuration than a firm whose strategy focuses on differentiation.
What is business level strategy?
Business-level strategies examine how firms compete in a given industry. Firms derive such strategies by executives making decisions about whether their source of competitive advantage is based on price or differentiation and whether their scope of operations targets a broad or narrow market.
Can a firm match every generic strategy?
Thus a firm may not match every characteristic that its generic strategy entails. Indeed, depending on the nature of a firm’s industry, tweaking the recipe of a generic strategy may be essential to cooking up success.
What is the generic strategy of General Electric?
General Electric’s main generic strategy for competitive advantage is differentiation . In this strategy, the company’s goal is to attract target customers to products that are special and unique. These products are made special and unique through research and development that GE is known for. For example, the company has advanced research and development processes for products in the healthcare and aviation industries. Because of its focus on research and development, General Electric Company is among the firms that have the highest number of company-owned patents in the United States. Also, this generic competitive strategy involves offering products to many market segments. In this way, GE maximizes sales based on a larger customer base. This generic strategy influences other strategies and tactics in the business, such as General Electric’s marketing mix or 4Ps. Also, GE aligns its intensive growth strategies with the competitive advantage targets based on strategic differentiation objectives.
What is the General Electric Company's growth strategy?
In this strategy, the company grows by establishing new applications, new markets or new market segments for its current products.
Which company has the most patents?
Because of its focus on research and development, General Electric Company is among the firms that have the highest number of company-owned patents in the United States. Also, this generic competitive strategy involves offering products to many market segments.
