Strategies for market leaders challengers followers and nichers

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Chapter
12

Addressing Competition and Driving Growth

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Learning Objectives

Why is it important for companies to grow the core of their business?

How can market leaders expand the total market and defend market share?

How should market challengers attack market leaders?

How can market followers or nichers compete effectively?

What marketing strategies are appropriate at each stage of the product life cycle?

How should marketers adjust their strategies and tactics during slow economic growth?

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Growth strategies

Building your market share
Developing committed customers and stakeholders
Building a powerful brand
Innovating new products, services, and experiences
International expansion
Acquisitions, mergers, and alliances
Building an outstanding reputation for social responsibility
Partnering with government and NGOs
An important function of marketing is to drive growth in sales and revenue for a company. Marketing is especially adept at doing so for a new product with many competitive advantages and much potential. Chapter 2 introduced how companies can grow through expansion with new products and new markets, the detailed

focus of Chapters 8 and 15. Along those lines, Phil and Milton Kotler stress the following strategies.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Growing the Core

Make the core of the brand as distinctive as possible

Drive distribution through both existing and new channels

Offer the core product in new formats or versions

Although many different growth strategies are available to firms, some of the best opportunities come from growing the core—focusing on their most successful existing products and markets. UK marketing guru David Taylor advocates three main strategies, citing these examples:

1. Make the core of the brand as distinctive as possible. Galaxy chocolate has successfully competed with Cadbury by positioning itself as “your partner in chocolate indulgence” and featuring smoother product shapes, more refined taste, and sleeker packaging.

2. Drive distribution through both existing and new channels. Costa Coffee, the number-one coffee shop in the United Kingdom, has found new distribution routes using drive-through outlets, vending machines at service stations, and in-school coffee shops.

3. Offer the core product in new formats or versions. WD40 offers a Smart Straw version of its popular multipurpose lubricant with a built-in straw that pops up for use.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Competitive Strategies
for Market Leaders

Expanding total market demand
Protecting market share
Increasing market share
Suppose a market is occupied by the firms shown in Figure 12.1. Forty percent is in the hands of a market leader, another 30 percent belongs to a market challenger, and 20 percent is claimed by a market follower willing to maintain its share and not rock the boat. Market nichers, serving small segments larger firms don’t reach, hold the remaining 10 percent. Sometimes growth depends on adopting the right competitive strategies.

To stay number one, the firm must first find ways to expand total market demand. Second, it must protect its current share through good defensive and offensive actions. Third, it should increase market share, even if market size remains constant.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Expanding total market demand

New customers
More usage
In general, the market leader should look for new customers or more usage from existing customers. As Chapter 2 suggested, a company can search for new users among three groups: those who might use it but do not (market-penetration strategy), those who have never used it (new-market segment strategy), or those who live elsewhere (geographical-expansion strategy). In targeting new customers, the firm should not lose sight of existing ones. Marketers can try to increase the amount, level, or frequency of consumption. They can sometimes boost the amount through packaging or product redesign. In general, increasing frequency of consumption requires either (1) identifying additional opportunities to use the brand in the same basic way or (2) identifying completely new and different ways to use the brand.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Protecting market share

Proactive marketing
Responsive anticipation

Creative anticipation

While trying to expand total market size, the dominant firm must actively defend its current business. The most constructive response is continuous innovation. The front-runner should lead the industry in developing new products and customer services, distribution effectiveness, and cost cutting. Comprehensive solutions increase competitive strength and value to customers so they feel appreciative or even privileged to be a customer as opposed to feeling trapped or taken advantage of.

A company needs two proactive skills: (1) responsive anticipation to see the writing on the wall, as when IBM changed from a hardware producer to a service business, and (2) creative anticipation to devise innovative solutions. Note that responsive anticipation is performed before a given change, while reactive response happens after the change takes place.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Protecting market share

Defensive marketing
The aim of defensive strategy is to reduce the probability of attack, divert attacks to less threatened areas, and lessen their intensity. A leader would like to do anything it legally and ethically can to reduce competitors’ ability to launch a new product, secure distribution, and gain consumer awareness, trial, and repeat.

A dominant firm can use the six defense strategies summarized in Figure 12.2. Position defense. Position defense means occupying the most desirable position in consumers’ minds, making the brand almost impregnable. Flank defense. The market leader should erect outposts to protect a weak front or support a possible counterattack. Preemptive defense. A more aggressive maneuver is to attack first, perhaps with guerrilla action across the market—hitting one competitor here, another there—and keeping everyone off balance. Another is to achieve broad market envelopment that signals competitors not to attack. Counteroffensive defense. In a counteroffensive, the market leader can meet the attacker frontally and hit its flank or launch a pincer movement so the attacker will have to pull back to defend itself. Another form of counteroffensive is the exercise of economic or political clout. Mobile defense. In mobile defense, the leader stretches its domain over new territories through market broadening and market diversification. Contraction defense. Sometimes large companies can no longer defend all their territory. In planned contraction (also called strategic withdrawal), they give up weaker markets and reassign resources to stronger ones.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Increasing market share

The cost of buying higher market share through acquisition may far exceed its revenue value
Possibility of provoking antitrust action

Pursuing wrong marketing activities

Economic cost

Increased market share effect on quality

Gaining increased share does not automatically produce higher profits, however—especially for labor intensive service companies that may not experience many economies of scale. Frustrated competitors are likely to cry “monopoly” and seek legal action if a dominant firm makes further inroads. Pushing for higher share is less justifiable when there are unattractive market segments, buyers who want multiple sources of supply, high exit barriers, and few scale or experience economies. Some market leaders have even increased profitability by selectively decreasing market share in weaker areas. Companies that attempt to increase market share by cutting prices more deeply than competitors typically don’t achieve significant gains because rivals meet the price cuts or offer other values so buyers don’t switch. Too many customers can put a strain on the firm’s resources, hurting product value and service delivery.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Figure 12.3
Optimal Market Share

Figure 12.3 shows that profitability might fall with market share gains after some level. In the illustration, the firm’s optimal market share is 50 percent.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

MARKET-CHALLENGER STRATEGIES

Defining the strategic objective and opponent(s)
A market challenger can attack:

The market leader
Underfunded firms its own size
Small local and regional firms
The status quo
A market challenger must first define its strategic objective, which is usually to increase market share. It then must decide whom to attack.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

MARKET-CHALLENGER STRATEGIES

Choosing a general attack strategy
Given clear opponents and objectives, what attack options are available? As Figure 12.4 shows, we can distinguish five: frontal, flank, encirclement, bypass, and guerilla attacks. In a pure frontal attack, the attacker matches its opponent’s product, advertising, price, and distribution. The principle of force says the side with the greater resources will win. A flanking strategy is another name for identifying shifts that cause gaps to develop in the market, then rushing to fill the gaps. Flanking is particularly attractive to a challenger with fewer resources and can be more likely to succeed than frontal attacks. Encirclement attempts to capture a wide slice of territory by launching a grand offensive on several fronts. It makes sense when the challenger commands superior resources. Bypassing the enemy altogether to attack easier markets instead offers three lines of approach: diversifying into unrelated products, diversifying into new geographical markets, and leapfrogging into new technologies. Guerrilla attacks consist of small, intermittent attacks, conventional and unconventional, including selective price cuts, intense promotional blitzes, and occasional legal action, to harass the opponent and eventually secure permanent footholds. A guerrilla campaign can be expensive, though less so than a frontal, encirclement, or flank attack, but it typically must be backed by a stronger attack to beat the opponent.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Market-Follower Strategies

Cloner

Imitator

Adapter

Although it may not overtake the leader, the follower can achieve high profits because it did not bear any of the innovation expense. Many companies prefer to follow rather than challenge the market leader. Each follower tries to bring distinctive advantages to its target market—location, services, financing—while defensively keeping its manufacturing costs low and its product quality and services high. It must also enter new markets as they open up. Followers must define a growth path, but one that doesn’t invite competitive retaliation. We distinguish three broad strategies:

Cloner—The cloner emulates the leader’s products, name, and packaging with slight variations.
2. Imitator—The imitator copies some things from the leader but differentiates on packaging, advertising, pricing, or location. The leader doesn’t mind as long as the imitator doesn’t attack aggressively.

3. Adapter—The adapter takes the leader’s products and adapts or improves them. The adapter may choose to sell to different markets, but often it grows into a future challenger, as many Japanese firms have done after improving products developed elsewhere.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

MARKET-NICHER STRATEGIES

To be a leader in a small market
Firms with low shares of the total market can become highly profitable through smart niching

Smaller firms normally avoid competing with larger firms by targeting small markets of little or no interest to the larger firms. Over time, those markets can sometimes end up being sizable in their own right, as Huy Fong Foods has found.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Niche Specialist Roles

End-user specialist

Vertical-level specialist

Customer-size specialist

Geographic specialist

Job-shop specialist

Channel specialist

Because niches can weaken, the firm must continually create new ones. “Marketing Memo: Niche Specialist Roles” outlines some options. The firm should “stick to its niching,” but not necessarily to its niche. That is why multiple niching can be preferable to single niching. With strength in two or more niches, the company increases its chances for survival.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

PRODUCT LIFE-CYCLE MARKETING STRATEGIES

A company’s positioning and differentiation strategy must change as its product, market, and competitors change over the PLC
Most product life cycles are portrayed as bell-shaped curves, typically divided into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline55 (see Figure 12.5).

1. Introduction—A period of slow sales growth as the product is introduced in the market. Profits are nonexistent because of the heavy expenses of product introduction.

2. Growth—A period of rapid market acceptance and substantial profit improvement.

3. Maturity—A slowdown in sales growth because the product has achieved acceptance by most potential

buyers. Profits stabilize or decline because of increased competition.

4. Decline—Sales show a downward drift and profits erode.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Figure 12.6
Common Product Life-Cycle Patterns

Not all products exhibit a bell-shaped PLC.56 Three common alternate patterns are shown in Figure 12.6. Figure 12.6(a) shows a growth-slump-maturity pattern, characteristic of small kitchen appliances like bread makers and toaster ovens. Sales grow rapidly when the product is first introduced and then fall to a “petrified” level sustained by late adopters buying the product for the first time and early adopters replacing it. The cycle-recycle pattern in Figure 12.6 (b) often describes the sales of new drugs. The pharmaceutical company aggressively promotes its new drug, producing the first cycle. Later, sales start declining, and another promotion push produces a second cycle (usually of smaller magnitude and duration). Another common pattern is the scalloped PLC in Figure 12.6 (c). Here, sales pass through a succession of life cycles based on the discovery of new product characteristics, uses, or users. Sales of nylon showed a classic scalloped pattern because of the many new uses—parachutes, hosiery, shirts, carpeting, boat sails, automobile tires—discovered over time.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Figure 12.7
Style, Fashion, And Fad Life Cycles

We need to distinguish three special categories of product life cycles: styles, fashions, and fads (Figure 12.7).

A style is a basic and distinctive mode of expression appearing in a field of human endeavor. A fashion is a currently accepted or popular style in a given field. Fashions pass through four stages: distinctiveness, emulation, mass fashion, and decline. Fads are fashions that come quickly into public view, are adopted with great zeal, peak early, and decline very fast.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Marketing Strategies: Introduction Stage

Pioneering advantages
Recall of brand name

Establishes product class attributes

Captures more uses in middle of market

Pioneering drawbacks
Imitators can surpass innovators

Once leadership is lost, it’s rarely regained

Companies that plan to introduce a new product must decide when to do so. To be first can be rewarding, but risky and expensive. To come in later makes sense if the firm can bring superior technology, quality, or brand strength to create a market advantage.

*

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Figure 12.8
Long-Range Product Market Expansion Strategy

Companies should not try to move too fast; they must carefully design and execute their product-launch marketing. The pioneer should visualize the product markets it could enter, knowing it cannot enter all of them at once. Suppose market-segmentation analysis reveals the segments shown in Figure 12.8. The pioneer should analyze the profit potential of each singly and of all together and decide on a market expansion path. Thus, the pioneer in Figure 12.8 plans first to enter product market P1M1, then move into a second market (P1M2), then surprise the competition by developing a second product for the second market (P2M2), then take the second product back into the first market (P2M1), then launch a third product for the first market (P3M1). If this game plan works, the pioneer firm will own a good part of the first two segments, serving each with two or three products.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Marketing Strategies: Growth Stage

To sustain rapid market share growth now:
Improve product quality and add new features

Add new models and flanker products

Enter new market segments

Increase distribution coverage and enter new distribution channels

Shift from awareness and trial communications to preference and loyalty communications

Lower prices to attract the next layer of price-sensitive buyers

By spending money on product improvement, promotion, and distribution, the firm can capture a dominant position. It trades off maximum current profit for high market share and the hope of even greater profits in the next stage.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Marketing Strategies: Maturity Stage

Market modification

Product modification

Marketing program modification

At some point, the rate of sales growth will slow, and the product will enter a stage of relative maturity. Most products are in this stage of the life cycle, which normally lasts longer than the preceding ones. Three ways to change the course for a brand are market, product, and marketing program modifications.

Market Modification. A company might try to expand the market for its mature brand by working with the two factors that make up sales volume, number of brand users and usage rate per customer, as in Table 12.1, but competitors may match this strategy.

Product Modification Managers also try to stimulate sales by improving quality, features, or style. Quality improvement increases functional performance by launching a “new and improved” product. Feature improvement adds size, weight, materials, supplements, and accessories that expand the product’s performance, versatility, safety, or convenience. Style improvement increases the product’s esthetic appeal.

Marketing Program Modification Finally, brand managers might also try to stimulate sales by modifying non-product elements—price, distribution, and communications in particular—as we will review in later chapters. They should assess the likely success of any changes in terms of their effects on new and existing customers.

*

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Market Modification

A company might try to expand the market for its mature brand by working with the two factors that make up sales volume, number of brand users and usage rate per customer, as in Table 12.1, but competitors may match this strategy.

*

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Marketing Strategies: Decline Stage

Eliminating Weak Products
Harvesting and Divesting
Sales decline for a number of reasons, including technological advances, shifts in consumer tastes, and increased domestic and foreign competition. All can lead to overcapacity, increased price cutting, and profit erosion. As sales and profits decline, some firms withdraw. Those remaining may reduce the number of products they offer, exiting smaller segments and weaker trade channels, cutting marketing budgets, and reducing prices further. Unless strong reasons for retention exist, carrying a weak product is often very costly.

Eliminating Weak Products Besides being unprofitable, weak products consume a disproportionate amount of management’s time, require frequent price and inventory adjustments, incur expensive setup for what are usually short production runs, draw advertising and sales force attention better used to make healthy products more profitable, and cast a negative shadow on company image.

Harvesting and Divesting Strategies for harvesting and for divesting are quite different. Harvesting calls for gradually reducing a product or business’s costs while trying to maintain sales. When a company decides to divest a product with strong distribution and residual goodwill, it can probably sell it to another firm.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

Marketing in a Slow-Growth Economy

Explore upside of increasing investment

Get closer to customers

Review budget allocations

Put forth compelling value proposition

Fine-tune brand and product offerings

Given economic cycles, there will always be tough times, such as the recession of 2008–2009 and the slow recovery that has followed. Despite reduced funding for marketing programs and intense pressure to justify them as cost effective, some marketers have survived—or even thrived—in tough economic times.

Marketers should consider the potential upside of increasing investment to exploit a marketplace advantage like an appealing new product, a weakened rival, or a neglected target market to develop. Consumers with leveling incomes may change what they want and where and how they shop. A downturn or slow-growth period is an opportunity to learn even more about what consumers are thinking, feeling, and doing, especially the loyal base that yields so much profitability. Slowed growth provides an opportunity for marketers to review their spending, opening promising new options and eliminating sacred cows if they don’t yield results. It can be a good time to experiment. Marketers should increase—and clearly communicate—their brands’ value, conveying all the financial, logistical, and psychological benefits. Marketers can review product portfolios and brand architecture to confirm that brands and sub-brands are clearly differentiated, targeted, and supported based on their prospects. Luxury brands can benefit from lower priced brands or sub-brands in their portfolios. Slow times also are an opportunity to prune products with diminished prospects.

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. 12-*

An important function of marketing is to drive growth in sales and revenue for a company. Marketing is especially adept at doing so for a new product with many competitive advantages and much potential. Chapter 2 introduced how companies can grow through expansion with new products and new markets, the detailed

focus of Chapters 8 and 15. Along those lines, Phil and Milton Kotler stress the following strategies.

*

Although many different growth strategies are available to firms, some of the best opportunities come from growing the core—focusing on their most successful existing products and markets. UK marketing guru David Taylor advocates three main strategies, citing these examples:

1. Make the core of the brand as distinctive as possible. Galaxy chocolate has successfully competed with Cadbury by positioning itself as “your partner in chocolate indulgence” and featuring smoother product shapes, more refined taste, and sleeker packaging.

2. Drive distribution through both existing and new channels. Costa Coffee, the number-one coffee shop in the United Kingdom, has found new distribution routes using drive-through outlets, vending machines at service stations, and in-school coffee shops.

3. Offer the core product in new formats or versions. WD40 offers a Smart Straw version of its popular multipurpose lubricant with a built-in straw that pops up for use.

*

Suppose a market is occupied by the firms shown in Figure 12.1. Forty percent is in the hands of a market leader, another 30 percent belongs to a market challenger, and 20 percent is claimed by a market follower willing to maintain its share and not rock the boat. Market nichers, serving small segments larger firms don’t reach, hold the remaining 10 percent. Sometimes growth depends on adopting the right competitive strategies.

To stay number one, the firm must first find ways to expand total market demand. Second, it must protect its current share through good defensive and offensive actions. Third, it should increase market share, even if market size remains constant.

*

In general, the market leader should look for new customers or more usage from existing customers. As Chapter 2 suggested, a company can search for new users among three groups: those who might use it but do not (market-penetration strategy), those who have never used it (new-market segment strategy), or those who live elsewhere (geographical-expansion strategy). In targeting new customers, the firm should not lose sight of existing ones. Marketers can try to increase the amount, level, or frequency of consumption. They can sometimes boost the amount through packaging or product redesign. In general, increasing frequency of consumption requires either (1) identifying additional opportunities to use the brand in the same basic way or (2) identifying completely new and different ways to use the brand.

*

While trying to expand total market size, the dominant firm must actively defend its current business. The most constructive response is continuous innovation. The front-runner should lead the industry in developing new products and customer services, distribution effectiveness, and cost cutting. Comprehensive solutions increase competitive strength and value to customers so they feel appreciative or even privileged to be a customer as opposed to feeling trapped or taken advantage of.

A company needs two proactive skills: (1) responsive anticipation to see the writing on the wall, as when IBM changed from a hardware producer to a service business, and (2) creative anticipation to devise innovative solutions. Note that responsive anticipation is performed before a given change, while reactive response happens after the change takes place.

*

The aim of defensive strategy is to reduce the probability of attack, divert attacks to less threatened areas, and lessen their intensity. A leader would like to do anything it legally and ethically can to reduce competitors’ ability to launch a new product, secure distribution, and gain consumer awareness, trial, and repeat.

A dominant firm can use the six defense strategies summarized in Figure 12.2. Position defense. Position defense means occupying the most desirable position in consumers’ minds, making the brand almost impregnable. Flank defense. The market leader should erect outposts to protect a weak front or support a possible counterattack. Preemptive defense. A more aggressive maneuver is to attack first, perhaps with guerrilla action across the market—hitting one competitor here, another there—and keeping everyone off balance. Another is to achieve broad market envelopment that signals competitors not to attack. Counteroffensive defense. In a counteroffensive, the market leader can meet the attacker frontally and hit its flank or launch a pincer movement so the attacker will have to pull back to defend itself. Another form of counteroffensive is the exercise of economic or political clout. Mobile defense. In mobile defense, the leader stretches its domain over new territories through market broadening and market diversification. Contraction defense. Sometimes large companies can no longer defend all their territory. In planned contraction (also called strategic withdrawal), they give up weaker markets and reassign resources to stronger ones.

*

Gaining increased share does not automatically produce higher profits, however—especially for labor intensive service companies that may not experience many economies of scale. Frustrated competitors are likely to cry “monopoly” and seek legal action if a dominant firm makes further inroads. Pushing for higher share is less justifiable when there are unattractive market segments, buyers who want multiple sources of supply, high exit barriers, and few scale or experience economies. Some market leaders have even increased profitability by selectively decreasing market share in weaker areas. Companies that attempt to increase market share by cutting prices more deeply than competitors typically don’t achieve significant gains because rivals meet the price cuts or offer other values so buyers don’t switch. Too many customers can put a strain on the firm’s resources, hurting product value and service delivery.

*

Figure 12.3 shows that profitability might fall with market share gains after some level. In the illustration, the firm’s optimal market share is 50 percent.

*

A market challenger must first define its strategic objective, which is usually to increase market share. It then must decide whom to attack.

*

Given clear opponents and objectives, what attack options are available? As Figure 12.4 shows, we can distinguish five: frontal, flank, encirclement, bypass, and guerilla attacks. In a pure frontal attack, the attacker matches its opponent’s product, advertising, price, and distribution. The principle of force says the side with the greater resources will win. A flanking strategy is another name for identifying shifts that cause gaps to develop in the market, then rushing to fill the gaps. Flanking is particularly attractive to a challenger with fewer resources and can be more likely to succeed than frontal attacks. Encirclement attempts to capture a wide slice of territory by launching a grand offensive on several fronts. It makes sense when the challenger commands superior resources. Bypassing the enemy altogether to attack easier markets instead offers three lines of approach: diversifying into unrelated products, diversifying into new geographical markets, and leapfrogging into new technologies. Guerrilla attacks consist of small, intermittent attacks, conventional and unconventional, including selective price cuts, intense promotional blitzes, and occasional legal action, to harass the opponent and eventually secure permanent footholds. A guerrilla campaign can be expensive, though less so than a frontal, encirclement, or flank attack, but it typically must be backed by a stronger attack to beat the opponent.

*

Although it may not overtake the leader, the follower can achieve high profits because it did not bear any of the innovation expense. Many companies prefer to follow rather than challenge the market leader. Each follower tries to bring distinctive advantages to its target market—location, services, financing—while defensively keeping its manufacturing costs low and its product quality and services high. It must also enter new markets as they open up. Followers must define a growth path, but one that doesn’t invite competitive retaliation. We distinguish three broad strategies:

Cloner—The cloner emulates the leader’s products, name, and packaging with slight variations.
2. Imitator—The imitator copies some things from the leader but differentiates on packaging, advertising, pricing, or location. The leader doesn’t mind as long as the imitator doesn’t attack aggressively.

3. Adapter—The adapter takes the leader’s products and adapts or improves them. The adapter may choose to sell to different markets, but often it grows into a future challenger, as many Japanese firms have done after improving products developed elsewhere.

*

Smaller firms normally avoid competing with larger firms by targeting small markets of little or no interest to the larger firms. Over time, those markets can sometimes end up being sizable in their own right, as Huy Fong Foods has found.

*

Because niches can weaken, the firm must continually create new ones. “Marketing Memo: Niche Specialist Roles” outlines some options. The firm should “stick to its niching,” but not necessarily to its niche. That is why multiple niching can be preferable to single niching. With strength in two or more niches, the company increases its chances for survival.

*

Most product life cycles are portrayed as bell-shaped curves, typically divided into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline55 (see Figure 12.5).

1. Introduction—A period of slow sales growth as the product is introduced in the market. Profits are nonexistent because of the heavy expenses of product introduction.

2. Growth—A period of rapid market acceptance and substantial profit improvement.

3. Maturity—A slowdown in sales growth because the product has achieved acceptance by most potential

buyers. Profits stabilize or decline because of increased competition.

4. Decline—Sales show a downward drift and profits erode.

*

Not all products exhibit a bell-shaped PLC.56 Three common alternate patterns are shown in Figure 12.6. Figure 12.6(a) shows a growth-slump-maturity pattern, characteristic of small kitchen appliances like bread makers and toaster ovens. Sales grow rapidly when the product is first introduced and then fall to a “petrified” level sustained by late adopters buying the product for the first time and early adopters replacing it. The cycle-recycle pattern in Figure 12.6 (b) often describes the sales of new drugs. The pharmaceutical company aggressively promotes its new drug, producing the first cycle. Later, sales start declining, and another promotion push produces a second cycle (usually of smaller magnitude and duration). Another common pattern is the scalloped PLC in Figure 12.6 (c). Here, sales pass through a succession of life cycles based on the discovery of new product characteristics, uses, or users. Sales of nylon showed a classic scalloped pattern because of the many new uses—parachutes, hosiery, shirts, carpeting, boat sails, automobile tires—discovered over time.

*

We need to distinguish three special categories of product life cycles: styles, fashions, and fads (Figure 12.7).

A style is a basic and distinctive mode of expression appearing in a field of human endeavor. A fashion is a currently accepted or popular style in a given field. Fashions pass through four stages: distinctiveness, emulation, mass fashion, and decline. Fads are fashions that come quickly into public view, are adopted with great zeal, peak early, and decline very fast.

*

Companies that plan to introduce a new product must decide when to do so. To be first can be rewarding, but risky and expensive. To come in later makes sense if the firm can bring superior technology, quality, or brand strength to create a market advantage.

*

Companies should not try to move too fast; they must carefully design and execute their product-launch marketing. The pioneer should visualize the product markets it could enter, knowing it cannot enter all of them at once. Suppose market-segmentation analysis reveals the segments shown in Figure 12.8. The pioneer should analyze the profit potential of each singly and of all together and decide on a market expansion path. Thus, the pioneer in Figure 12.8 plans first to enter product market P1M1, then move into a second market (P1M2), then surprise the competition by developing a second product for the second market (P2M2), then take the second product back into the first market (P2M1), then launch a third product for the first market (P3M1). If this game plan works, the pioneer firm will own a good part of the first two segments, serving each with two or three products.

*

By spending money on product improvement, promotion, and distribution, the firm can capture a dominant position. It trades off maximum current profit for high market share and the hope of even greater profits in the next stage.

*

At some point, the rate of sales growth will slow, and the product will enter a stage of relative maturity. Most products are in this stage of the life cycle, which normally lasts longer than the preceding ones. Three ways to change the course for a brand are market, product, and marketing program modifications.

Market Modification. A company might try to expand the market for its mature brand by working with the two factors that make up sales volume, number of brand users and usage rate per customer, as in Table 12.1, but competitors may match this strategy.

Product Modification Managers also try to stimulate sales by improving quality, features, or style. Quality improvement increases functional performance by launching a “new and improved” product. Feature improvement adds size, weight, materials, supplements, and accessories that expand the product’s performance, versatility, safety, or convenience. Style improvement increases the product’s esthetic appeal.

Marketing Program Modification Finally, brand managers might also try to stimulate sales by modifying non-product elements—price, distribution, and communications in particular—as we will review in later chapters. They should assess the likely success of any changes in terms of their effects on new and existing customers.

*

A company might try to expand the market for its mature brand by working with the two factors that make up sales volume, number of brand users and usage rate per customer, as in Table 12.1, but competitors may match this strategy.

*

Sales decline for a number of reasons, including technological advances, shifts in consumer tastes, and increased domestic and foreign competition. All can lead to overcapacity, increased price cutting, and profit erosion. As sales and profits decline, some firms withdraw. Those remaining may reduce the number of products they offer, exiting smaller segments and weaker trade channels, cutting marketing budgets, and reducing prices further. Unless strong reasons for retention exist, carrying a weak product is often very costly.

Eliminating Weak Products Besides being unprofitable, weak products consume a disproportionate amount of management’s time, require frequent price and inventory adjustments, incur expensive setup for what are usually short production runs, draw advertising and sales force attention better used to make healthy products more profitable, and cast a negative shadow on company image.

Harvesting and Divesting Strategies for harvesting and for divesting are quite different. Harvesting calls for gradually reducing a product or business’s costs while trying to maintain sales. When a company decides to divest a product with strong distribution and residual goodwill, it can probably sell it to another firm.

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Given economic cycles, there will always be tough times, such as the recession of 2008–2009 and the slow recovery that has followed. Despite reduced funding for marketing programs and intense pressure to justify them as cost effective, some marketers have survived—or even thrived—in tough economic times.

Marketers should consider the potential upside of increasing investment to exploit a marketplace advantage like an appealing new product, a weakened rival, or a neglected target market to develop. Consumers with leveling incomes may change what they want and where and how they shop. A downturn or slow-growth period is an opportunity to learn even more about what consumers are thinking, feeling, and doing, especially the loyal base that yields so much profitability. Slowed growth provides an opportunity for marketers to review their spending, opening promising new options and eliminating sacred cows if they don’t yield results. It can be a good time to experiment. Marketers should increase—and clearly communicate—their brands’ value, conveying all the financial, logistical, and psychological benefits. Marketers can review product portfolios and brand architecture to confirm that brands and sub-brands are clearly differentiated, targeted, and supported based on their prospects. Luxury brands can benefit from lower priced brands or sub-brands in their portfolios. Slow times also are an opportunity to prune products with diminished prospects.

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