Strategic Market Management – Key Learnings
Chapter 1
• A business strategy includes the determination of the product-market investment
strategy, the customer value proposition, assets and competencies, and functional area
strategy.
• Strategy needs to be developed and executed in the context of a dynamic market. To
cope, it is important to develop competencies in strategic analysis, innovation, managing
multiple businesses, and developing SCAs.
• Strategic market management is a system designed to help visions. A strategic vision is a
vision of a future strategy or sets of strategies. Strategic market management includes a
strategic analysis of the business to identify existing or emerging opportunities, threats,
trends, strategic uncertainties, and strategic alternatives.
• The CMO role has grown over the years and is now often charged with being a partner in
developing strategies and a vehicle to deal with the dysfunctions of the product market
silos.
Chapter 2
• External analysis should influence strategy by identifying opportunities, threats, trends,
and strategic uncertainties. The ultimate goal is to improve strategic choices – decisions
as to where and how to compete.
• Segmentation (identifying customer groups that can support different competitive
strategies) can be based on a variety of customer characteristics, such as benefits sought,
customer loyalty, and applications.
• Customer motivation analysis can provide insights into what assets and competencies
are needed to compete, as well as indicate possible SCAs.
• Unmet needs that represent opportunities (or threats) can be identified by projecting
technologies, by accessing lead users, by ethnographic research, and by interacting with
customers.
Chapter 3
• Competitors can be identified by customer choice (the set from which customers select)
or by clustering them into strategic groups, (firms that pursue similar strategies and
have similar assets, competencies, and other characteristics). In either case, competitors
will vary in terms of how intensely they compete.
• Competitors should be analysed along several dimensions, including their size, growth
and profitability, image, objectives, business strategies, organisational culture, cost
structure, exit barriers, and strengths and weaknesses.
• Potential strengths and weaknesses can be identified by considering the characteristics
of successful and unsuccessful businesses, key customer motivations, and value-added
components.
• The competitive strength grid, which arrays competitors or strategic groups on each of
the relevant assets and competencies, provides a compact summary of key strategic
information.
, Chapter 4
• The emergence of submarkets can signal a relevance problem or opportunity.
• Market Analysis should assess the attractiveness of a market or submarket, as well as its
structure and dynamics.
• A usage gap can cause the market size to be understand
• Market growth can be forecast by looking at driving forces, leading indicators, and
analogous industries.
• Market profitability will depend on five factors: existing competitors, supplier power,
customer power, substitute products, and potential entrants.
• Cost structure can be analysed by looking at the value added at each production stage.
• Distribution channels and trends will often affect who wins.
• Market trends will affect both the profitability of strategies and key success factors
• Key success factors are the skills and competencies needed to compete in a market.
• Growth-market challenges involve the threat of competitors, market changes, and firm
limitations.
Chapter 5
• Environmental analysis in technology and consumer and government/economic trends
can detect opportunities or threats to an organization.
• The green movement provides opportunities to connect to customers and employees.
• Impact analysis involves assessing systematically the impact and immediacy of the
trends and events that underlie each strategy uncertainty.
• Scenario analysis, a vehicle to explore different assumptions about the future, involves
the creation of two to three plausible scenarios, the development of strategies
appropriate to each, the assessment of scenario probabilities, and the evaluation of the
resulting strategies across the scenarios.
Chapter 6
• Sales and profitability analysis provide an evaluation of past strategies and an indication
of the current market viability of a product line. Shareholder value holds that the flow of
profits emanating from an investment should exceed the cost of capital (which is the
weighted average of the cost of equity and cost of debt). Routes to achieving shareholder
value – such as downsizing, reducing assets employed, and outsourcing – can be risky
when they undercut assets and competencies.
• Performance assessment should go beyond financials to include such dimensions as
customer satisfaction/brand loyalty, product/service quality, brand/firms associations,
relative cost, new product activity, and manager/employee capability and performance.
• Assets and competencies can represent a point of advantage, a point of parity or a
liability. Threats and opportunities that are both imminent and important should trigger
strategic imperatives, programs with high priority.
Chapter 7
• To create an SCA, a strategy needs to be valued by the market and supported by assets
and competencies that are not easily copied or neutralised by competitors. The most
common SCAs are quality reputation, customer support, and brand name.
• Synergy is often sustainable because it is based on the unique characteristics of an
organisation.
• Strategic commitment, involving a ‘stick-to-your-knitting’ focus on a clearly articulated
strategy, is based on an assumption that the business model needs to be refined and
improved and not changed.
• Strategic opportunism assumes that the environment is so dynamic and uncertain that it
is futile to predict the future and invest behind those opportunities when they present
themselves, with the goal of achieving immediate profits.
Chapter 1
• A business strategy includes the determination of the product-market investment
strategy, the customer value proposition, assets and competencies, and functional area
strategy.
• Strategy needs to be developed and executed in the context of a dynamic market. To
cope, it is important to develop competencies in strategic analysis, innovation, managing
multiple businesses, and developing SCAs.
• Strategic market management is a system designed to help visions. A strategic vision is a
vision of a future strategy or sets of strategies. Strategic market management includes a
strategic analysis of the business to identify existing or emerging opportunities, threats,
trends, strategic uncertainties, and strategic alternatives.
• The CMO role has grown over the years and is now often charged with being a partner in
developing strategies and a vehicle to deal with the dysfunctions of the product market
silos.
Chapter 2
• External analysis should influence strategy by identifying opportunities, threats, trends,
and strategic uncertainties. The ultimate goal is to improve strategic choices – decisions
as to where and how to compete.
• Segmentation (identifying customer groups that can support different competitive
strategies) can be based on a variety of customer characteristics, such as benefits sought,
customer loyalty, and applications.
• Customer motivation analysis can provide insights into what assets and competencies
are needed to compete, as well as indicate possible SCAs.
• Unmet needs that represent opportunities (or threats) can be identified by projecting
technologies, by accessing lead users, by ethnographic research, and by interacting with
customers.
Chapter 3
• Competitors can be identified by customer choice (the set from which customers select)
or by clustering them into strategic groups, (firms that pursue similar strategies and
have similar assets, competencies, and other characteristics). In either case, competitors
will vary in terms of how intensely they compete.
• Competitors should be analysed along several dimensions, including their size, growth
and profitability, image, objectives, business strategies, organisational culture, cost
structure, exit barriers, and strengths and weaknesses.
• Potential strengths and weaknesses can be identified by considering the characteristics
of successful and unsuccessful businesses, key customer motivations, and value-added
components.
• The competitive strength grid, which arrays competitors or strategic groups on each of
the relevant assets and competencies, provides a compact summary of key strategic
information.
, Chapter 4
• The emergence of submarkets can signal a relevance problem or opportunity.
• Market Analysis should assess the attractiveness of a market or submarket, as well as its
structure and dynamics.
• A usage gap can cause the market size to be understand
• Market growth can be forecast by looking at driving forces, leading indicators, and
analogous industries.
• Market profitability will depend on five factors: existing competitors, supplier power,
customer power, substitute products, and potential entrants.
• Cost structure can be analysed by looking at the value added at each production stage.
• Distribution channels and trends will often affect who wins.
• Market trends will affect both the profitability of strategies and key success factors
• Key success factors are the skills and competencies needed to compete in a market.
• Growth-market challenges involve the threat of competitors, market changes, and firm
limitations.
Chapter 5
• Environmental analysis in technology and consumer and government/economic trends
can detect opportunities or threats to an organization.
• The green movement provides opportunities to connect to customers and employees.
• Impact analysis involves assessing systematically the impact and immediacy of the
trends and events that underlie each strategy uncertainty.
• Scenario analysis, a vehicle to explore different assumptions about the future, involves
the creation of two to three plausible scenarios, the development of strategies
appropriate to each, the assessment of scenario probabilities, and the evaluation of the
resulting strategies across the scenarios.
Chapter 6
• Sales and profitability analysis provide an evaluation of past strategies and an indication
of the current market viability of a product line. Shareholder value holds that the flow of
profits emanating from an investment should exceed the cost of capital (which is the
weighted average of the cost of equity and cost of debt). Routes to achieving shareholder
value – such as downsizing, reducing assets employed, and outsourcing – can be risky
when they undercut assets and competencies.
• Performance assessment should go beyond financials to include such dimensions as
customer satisfaction/brand loyalty, product/service quality, brand/firms associations,
relative cost, new product activity, and manager/employee capability and performance.
• Assets and competencies can represent a point of advantage, a point of parity or a
liability. Threats and opportunities that are both imminent and important should trigger
strategic imperatives, programs with high priority.
Chapter 7
• To create an SCA, a strategy needs to be valued by the market and supported by assets
and competencies that are not easily copied or neutralised by competitors. The most
common SCAs are quality reputation, customer support, and brand name.
• Synergy is often sustainable because it is based on the unique characteristics of an
organisation.
• Strategic commitment, involving a ‘stick-to-your-knitting’ focus on a clearly articulated
strategy, is based on an assumption that the business model needs to be refined and
improved and not changed.
• Strategic opportunism assumes that the environment is so dynamic and uncertain that it
is futile to predict the future and invest behind those opportunities when they present
themselves, with the goal of achieving immediate profits.
