Marketing 2016 - Case Study -

Marketing Management 15th

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Marketing Management 15th Edition

MBA MARKETING & INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
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MARKETING, MARKETING MANAGEMENT, E-MARKETING,
INTERNATIONAL AND GLOBAL MARKETING
Case study guides and online resources (2016)
Marketing Management, 2016, 15th Edition, Philip T. Kotler, Kevin Lane Keller

MARKETING DEBATE—Do Brands Have Finite Lives?

Often, after a brand begins to slip in the marketplace or disappears altogether, commentators
observe, “all brands have their day.” Their rationale is that all brands, in some sense, have a
finite life and cannot be expected to be leaders forever. Other experts contend, however, that
brands can live forever, and long-term success depends as much on the skill and insight of the
marketers involved.
Take a position: Brands cannot be expected to last forever versus there is no reason for a brand to
ever become obsolete.
Pro: Brands can last forever as evidenced by a number of brands that are entering their one
hundredth year of existence. For a brand to have immortality, it must continue to have a
competitive advantage in its product differentiation dimensions (product, services, personnel,
channel, and symbols). The management of the brand, how well brand management monitors
changes in the environment, customer preferences, strategies, and technology to continue to
equip the brand with point-of-differences and/or points-of-parity is the key to the brand’s
ongoing success in the marketplace.
Con: Brands meet specific consumer needs and wants and provide specifics for these needs and
wants. As consumer needs and wants change, evolve, or disappear, brands must also change,
evolve, and finally expire. The loss of the brands point-of-difference in the marketplace or its
lack of point-of-parity with other brands will cause its demise. Firms can be best served to
understand and accept the inevitability of brand declines and plan for the creation of and
marketing of newer brands to replace declining brands quickly. If a brand is designed to perform
a specific function, the change in technologies may render that brand obsolete and see its market
decline. Consider the case of the IBM Selectric® typewriter as an example where the new
technology of computers rendered this brand obsolete. Every manufacturer or service provider
must be on the lookout for threats to their brand’s ongoing effectiveness and applicability and
develop appropriate replacement strategies.

MARKETING DISCUSSION
Pick an industry. Classify firms according to the four different roles they might play: leader,
challenger, follower, or nicher. How would you characterize the nature of competition? Do the
firms follow the principles described in the chapter?
Suggested Response:
Student answers will differ according to the industries picked and the role the firms play in that
industry. All answers should contain some of the following:
Leaders: largest market share, leads on price changes, new-product introductions, distribution
coverage, and promotional intensity. Have products that generally hold a distinctive position in
the minds of the consumers.
Can use strategies that expand the total market demand: (new customers—market-penetration
strategies, new-market segment strategies, geographic-expansion strategies).
More usage (level of quantity or frequency of consumption).
Protect its current market share through good defensive action (position defense, flank defense,
preemptive defense, counteroffensive defense, mobile defense, contraction defense).
Challengers, followers: can attack the leader for increased market share, (challengers), or
followers (“not rock the boat”), through:

 Frontal attack.
 Encirclement attack.
 Flank attack.
 Bypass attack.
 Guerrilla warfare.

Marketing Excellence: SAMSUNG

1. What are some of Samsung’s greatest competitive strengths?

Suggested Answer: Responsiveness, low cost structure, quick response to economic events. For
example, Samsung cut costs and reemphasized product quality and manufacturing flexibility,
which allowed its consumer electronics to go from project phase to store shelves within six
months. Samsung also invested heavily in innovation and focused intently on its memory-chip
business, and poured money into R&D during the 2000s. Samsung’s success has been driven not
only by successful product innovation, but also by aggressive brand building over the last
decade.

2. Samsung’s goal of $400 billion in sales by 2020 would bring it to the same level as
Walmart. Is this feasible? Why or why not?
Suggested Answer: Student’s answers will vary and of course be opinionated, however, good
students will note the following facts: Samsung ended 2009 with record-high quarterly profits
despite significantly smaller profit margins. Today, Samsung is the global leader in flat-panel
TVs and memory chips, and the number-two player in mobile phones. It is focused on growing
technologies such as smart phones and has partnered with both Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and
Google’s Android software. In addition, Samsung has formed a green partnership with Microsoft
to help create energy efficient computers. And unlike rival firms, Samsung has become a global
leader by making both components for electronics products and the actual devices sold to
consumers without acquiring major competitors.

Marketing Excellence: IBM

1. Few companies have had such a long history of ups and downs as IBM. What were some
of the keys to its recent success? Can its plans to solve some of the world’s most
challenging problems succeed? Why or why not?

Suggested Answer: Student answers will be speculative and opinionated however, some of
IBM’s keys to its recent success: the company moved further away from hardware and embraced
global consulting and data analytics by acquiring close to 100 firms, including
PricewaterhouseCoopers.

2. Who are IBM’s biggest competitors today, and what risks do they face with their current
strategy?

Suggested Answer: Today, IBM is the largest and most profitable information technology
company in the world and as a result should consider Microsoft, Apple, Google, and other
information companies as competitors.
As for a risk with their current strategy, their targets are huge problems like pollution and
congestion. Success in tackling these problems would be considered low—but if they are
successful IBM could reap huge profits.

DETAILED CHAPTER OUTLINE

Opening vignette: To be a long-term market leader is the goal of any marketer. Today’s
challenging marketing circumstances often dictate that companies reformulate their marketing
strategies and offerings several times, like UPS and FedEx. <section id=”ch11lev1bm”
role=”bm”><title id=”ch11lev1bm.title”/><para><emphasis role=”strong”>This chapter
examines growth, the role competition plays, and how marketers can best manage their brands
given their market position and stage of the product life cycle.

1. Growth
2. An important function of marketing is to drive growth in sales and revenue for a
company.
3. Growth Strategies
1. <CORE><OLINK>Grow by building your market share
2. Grow by developing committed customers and stakeholders
3. Grow by building a powerful brand
4. Grow by innovating new products, services, and experiences
5. Grow by international expansion
6. Grow by acquisitions, mergers, and alliances
7. Grow by building an outstanding reputation for social responsibility
8. Grow by partnering with government and NGOs
4. Growing the Core
1. Growing the core is focusing on a firm’s most successful existing products and
markets
2. Avoid the trap of thinking the “grass is always greener” and overestimating the
upside of new ventures that stretch the company into uncharted territory.
3. Growing the core can be a less risky alternative than expansion into new product
categories.
4. It strengthens a brand’s credentials as a source of authority and credibility and can
yield economies of scale.
5. Through improved revenues and lower costs, growing the core can also lead to
greater profits.
6. Three main strategies:
1. Make the core of the brand as distinctive as possible.
2. Drive distribution through both existing and new channels

 Offer the core product in new formats or versions

1. Growth strategies are not necessarily “either/or” propositions. A focus on core businesses
does not mean foregoing new market opportunities.

1. Competitive Strategies for Market Leaders

2. <para>A market leader has the largest market share and usually leads in price changes,
new-product introductions, distribution coverage, and promotional intensity.
3. Although marketers assume well-known brands are distinctive in consumers’ minds,
unless a dominant firm enjoys a legal monopoly, it must maintain constant vigilance.
<para>
1. Find ways to expand total market demand
2. Protect its current share through good defensive and offensive actions
3. Increase market share, even if market size remains constant
4. <section id="ch11lev2sec1"><title id="ch11lev2sec1.title">Expanding Total Market
Demand</title>
1. <para>When the total market expands, the dominant firm usually gains the most.
2. Attract <section id="ch11lev3sec1"><title id="ch11lev3sec1.title">New
Customers</title><para><inst><CORE>
 1. Those who might use it but do not <emphasis>(market-penetration
strategy)</emphasis>
2. Those who have never used it <emphasis>(new-market segment strategy)

 </emphasis>Those who live elsewhere <emphasis>(geographical-expansion strategy)

1. More Usage</title><para><inst></inst>
1. Increase the amount, level, or frequency of consumption
2. Boost the <emphasis>amount</emphasis> through packaging or product redesign

 Identify additional opportunities to use the brand in the same basic way

1. Identify completely new and different ways to use the brand </para>

1. Protect Market Share

1. The front-runner should lead the industry in developing new products and
customer services, distribution effectiveness, and cost cutting.
2. 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
3. <section id="ch11lev3sec3"><title
id="ch11lev3sec3.title"></title><para><inst></inst>In satisfying customer needs,
we can draw a distinction between responsive marketing, anticipative marketing,
and creative marketing.
1. A <emphasis>responsive</emphasis> marketer finds a stated need and
fills it.
2. An <emphasis>anticipative</emphasis> marketer looks ahead to needs
customers may have in the near future.

 A <emphasis>creative</emphasis> marketer discovers solutions customers did not ask

for but to which they enthusiastically respond.

1. <para>A company needs two proactive skills:

1. Responsive anticipation</emphasis> to see the writing on the wall<emphasis>
2. Creative anticipation</emphasis> to devise innovative solutions
2. Characteristics of proactive companies
1. <para>Create new offers to serve unmet—and maybe even unknown—consumer
needs.
2. Proactive companies may redesign relationships within an industry

 Proactive firms are ready to take risks and make mistakes,</para></listitem> have a
vision of the future and of investing in it, have the capabilities to innovate, are flexible
and non-bureaucratic, and have many managers who think proactively
4. <section id="ch11lev3sec4"><title id="ch11lev3sec4.title">The aim of defensive
strategy is to reduce the probability of attack, divert attacks to less-threatened areas, and
lessen their intensity.
1. 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.
2. In any strategy, speed of response can make an important difference to profit.

 Six defense strategies: <itemizedlist mark="bull"

spacing="normal"><listitem><inst></inst><title>
1. Position defense.</title><para><inst></inst>Position defense means occupying
the most desirable position in consumers’ minds, making the brand almost
impregnable.
2. <listitem><inst>F</inst><title>lank defense.</title><para><inst></inst>The
market leader should erect outposts to protect a weak front or support a possible
counterattack.
3. 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. <listitem><inst></inst><title>
4. Counteroffensive defense.</title><para><inst></inst>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. <listitem><inst>
5. </inst><title>Mobile defense.</title><para><inst></inst>In mobile defense, the
leader stretches its domain over new territories through market broadening and
market diversification. <emphasis><listitem><inst></inst><title>
6. Contraction defense.</title><para><inst></inst>Sometimes large companies can
no longer defend all their territory. In <emphasis>planned
contraction</emphasis> (also called <emphasis>strategic
withdrawal</emphasis>), they give up weaker markets and reassign resources to
stronger ones.

3. <section id="ch11lev2sec3"><title id="ch11lev2sec3.title">Increasing Market

Share</title>: Before buying higher market share through acquisition may far exceed its
revenue value, a company should consider four factors first:<link linkend="fg11_00300"
preference="1" type="forward"><inst> </inst></link></para>
1. <itemizedlist mark="bull" spacing="normal"><listitem><inst></inst><title>The
possibility of provoking antitrust action.</title><para><inst></inst>
2. Economic cost
3. The danger of pursuing the wrong marketing activities
4. The effect of increased market share on actual and perceived quality

 Other Competitive Strategies

4. <section id="ch11lev2sec4"><title id="ch11lev2sec4.title">Market-Challenger

Strategies</title>
 5. <section id="ch11lev3sec5"><title id="ch11lev3sec5.title">Defining the Strategic
Objective and Opponent(s)</title><para><inst></inst>
6. Decide whom to attack:</para>
1. Attack the market leader.</title><para><inst></inst>
1. High-risk but potentially high-payoff strategy and makes good
sense if the leader is not serving the market well.
2. Added benefit of distancing the firm from other challengers.
</para></listitem>
2. Attack firms its own size that are not doing the job and are
underfinanced.</title><para><inst></inst>

 Attack small local and regional firms.</title><para><inst></inst>

1. Attack the status quo.</title><para><inst>

6. <section id="ch11lev3sec6"><title id="ch11lev3sec6.title">Choosing a General Attack

Strategy</title><para><inst></inst><itemizedlist mark="bull"
spacing="normal"><listitem><inst></inst><title>
1. Frontal attack</title><para><inst></inst>
1. Attacker matches its opponent’s product, advertising, price, and
distribution.
2. The principle of force says the side with the greater resources will win.
3. A modified frontal attack, such as cutting price, can work if the market
leader doesn’t retaliate and if the competitor convinces the market its
product is equal to the leader’s. <listitem><inst></inst><title>
2. Flank attack
1. Identify shifts that cause gaps to develop in the market, then rushing to fill
the gaps.
2. Flanking is particularly attractive to a challenger with fewer resources and
can be more likely to succeed than frontal attacks.
3. Another flanking strategy is to serve uncovered market needs.
4. With a geographic attack, the challenger spots areas where the opponent is
underperforming.

 Encirclement attack</title><para><inst></inst><emphasis>
1. Attempts to capture a wide slice of territory by launching a grand offensive on
several fronts.
2. Makes sense when the challenger commands superior resources. <listitem><inst>

1. Bypass attack: </inst><emphasis>Bypassing</emphasis> 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.
<listitem><inst>
2. </inst><title>Guerrilla attack</title><para><inst></inst>
1. 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.
2. 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. </para></listitem></itemizedlist></section>

1. <section id="ch11lev2sec5"><title id="ch11lev2sec5.title">Market-Follower

Strategies</title>
1. In “innovative imitation,” the innovator bears the expense of developing the new
product, getting it into distribution, and informing and educating the market.
2. Patterns of “conscious parallelism” are common in capital-intensive,
homogeneous-product industries such as steel, fertilizers, and chemicals where
opportunities for product differentiation and image differentiation are low, service
quality is comparable, and price sensitivity runs high.
3. Followers must define a growth path, but one that doesn’t invite competitive
retaliation. We distinguish three broad strategies:</para><listitem><inst>

1. </inst><title>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.

 Adapter—The adapter takes the leader’s products and adapts or improves them.

1. Counterfeiters duplicate the leader’s product and packages and sell them on the black
market or through disreputable dealers.

6. <section id="ch11lev2sec6"><title id="ch11lev2sec6.title">Market-Nicher Strategies—

be a leader in a small market, or niche<CORE>
1. Smaller firms normally avoid competing with larger firms by targeting small
markets of little or no interest to the larger firms. <para>
2. Firms with low shares of the total market can become highly profitable through
smart niching.
1. Know their target customers so well they can meet their needs better than
other firms by offering high value, but they can also charge a premium
price, achieve lower manufacturing costs, and shape a strong corporate
culture and vision.
2. <endnoteref olinkend="ch11en33" label="33"/></para><para>The nicher
achieves <emphasis>high margin,</emphasis> whereas the mass marketer
achieves <emphasis>high volume.

 <para>Nichers have three tasks: creating niches, expanding niches, and protecting niches.

3. <section id="ch10lev1sec03"><inst>Product Life-Cycle Marketing

Strategies</inst><title id="ch10lev1sec03.title"></title>
4. To say a product has a life cycle is to assert four things:
1. Products have a limited life
2. Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges,
opportunities, and problems to the seller
3. Profits rise and fall at different stages of the product life cycle
4. Products require different marketing, financial, manufacturing, purchasing, and
human resource strategies in each life-cycle stage
5. <section id="ch11lev2sec7"><title id="ch11lev2sec7.title">Product Life Cycles</title>
1. <para>Most product life cycles are portrayed as bell-shaped curves, typically
divided into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline
2. 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
3. Growth—A period of rapid market acceptance and substantial profit improvement
4. Maturity—A slowdown in sales growth because the product has achieved
acceptance by most potential buyers. Profits stabilize or decline because of
increased competition
5. Decline—Sales show a downward drift and profits erode
6. Growth-slump-maturity pattern characteristic of small kitchen appliances like
bread makers and toaster ovens.
7. Cycle-recycle pattern describes the sales of new drugs.
8. Scalloped PLC is where sales pass through a succession of life cycles based on
the discovery of new product characteristics, uses, or users.

1. Style, Fashion, and Fad Life Cycles

1. A style is a basic and distinctive mode of expression appearing in a field of
human endeavor and can last for generations and go in and out of vogue.
2. A fashion is a currently accepted or popular style in a given field. Fashions pass
through four stages: distinctiveness, emulation, mass fashion, and decline.
3. Fads are fashions that come quickly into public view, are adopted with great zeal,
peak early, and decline very fast.
2. Pioneering Advantages
1. What are the sources of the pioneer’s advantage?

1. Early users will recall the pioneer’s brand name if the product satisfies them.
2. The pioneer’s brand also establishes the attributes the product class should possess

 Customer inertia also plays a role, and there are producer advantages: economies of scale,
technological leadership, patents, ownership of scarce assets, and the ability to erect other
barriers to entry.

1. Pioneers can spend marketing dollars more effectively and enjoy higher rates of repeat
purchases.

1. Double Jeopardy: a small-share brand is penalized twice—it has fewer buyers

than a large-share brand, and they buy less frequently.
1. Implicit in the principle of double jeopardy is the assumption that brands are substitutable
and have target segments in common
2. They see PR efforts, distribution plans, and any means to increase brand exposure,
familiarity, and availability as more important than persuasive advertising to target
switchers or CRM efforts to reward loyal customers.

1. Successful imitators thrive by offering lower prices, continuously improving the

product, or using brute market power to overtake the pioneer.

1. They distinguish between an inventor, first to develop patents in a new-product category,

a product pioneer, first to develop a working model, and a market pioneer, first to sell in
the new-product category.
2. Leading brands are more likely to persist during academic slowdowns and when inflation
is high and less likely to persist during economic expansion and when inflation is low.

1. Once brand leadership has been lost, it is rarely regained.

2. Categories with above-average brand leadership persistence are food and
household supplies; those with below-average rates are durables and clothing.
2. Gaining a Pioneering Advantage
1. Five factors underpinning long-term market leadership: vision of a mass market,
persistence, relentless innovation, financial commitment, and asset leverage
2. Other research has highlighted the role of genuine product innovation
3. When a pioneer starts a market with a really new product, like the Segway Human
Transporter, surviving can be very challenging.
3. Marketing Strategies: Growth Stage
1. Rapid climb in sales. Early adopters like the product, and additional consumers
start buying it. New competitors enter, attracted by the opportunities. They
introduce new product features and expand distribution.
2. Prices stabilize or fall slightly, depending on how fast demand increases.
3. Companies maintain marketing expenditures or raise them slightly to meet
competition and continue to educate the market. Sales rise much faster than
marketing expenditures, causing a welcome decline in the marketing-to-sales
ratio.
4. Profits increase as marketing costs are spread over a larger volume, and unit
manufacturing costs fall faster than price declines, owing to the producer-learning
effect.
5. Firms must watch for a change to a decelerating rate of growth in order to prepare
new strategies.
6. To sustain rapid market share growth now, the firm:

1. Improves product quality and adds new features and improved styling.
2. Adds new models and flanker products (of different sizes, flavors, and so forth) to protect
the main product

 Enters new market segments

1. Increases its distribution coverage and enters new distribution channels
2. Shifts from awareness and trial communications to preference and loyalty
communications
3. Lowers prices to attract the next layer of price-sensitive buyers

1. Marketing Strategies: Maturity Stage

1. Most products are in this stage of the life cycle, which normally lasts longer than
the preceding ones
2. The maturity stage divides into three phases: growth, stable, and decaying
maturity.

1. In the first, sales growth starts to slow. There are no new distribution channels to fill.
New competitive forces emerge.
2. In the second phase, sales per capita flatten because of market saturation. Most potential
consumers have tried the product, and future sales depend on population growth and
replacement demand.

 In the third phase, decaying maturity, the absolute level of sales starts to decline, and
customers begin switching to other products

1. This third phase poses the most challenges. The sales slowdown creates overcapacity in
the industry, which intensifies competition. Weaker competitors withdraw.
1. A few giants dominate—perhaps a quality leader, a service leader, and a cost
leader—and they profit mainly through high volume and lower costs.
2. Surrounding them is a multitude of market nichers, including market specialists,
product specialists, and customizing firms
3. The question is whether to struggle to become one of the big three and achieve
profits through high volume and low cost or to pursue a niching strategy and
profit through low volume and high margins. Sometimes the market will divide
into low- and high-end segments, and market shares of firms in the middle will
steadily erode.

1. Three ways to change the course for a brand are market, product, and marketing program
modifications
1. 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
2. Managers also try to stimulate sales by improving quality, features, or style.

1. Quality improvement increases functional performance by launching a “new and

improved” product.
2. 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.

 1. Brand managers might also try to stimulate sales by modifying non-product
elements—price, distribution, and communications in particular
2. Marketing Strategies: Decline Stage
1. Sales decline for a number of reasons, including technological advances, shifts in
consumer tastes, and increased domestic and foreign competition.
2. All can lead to overcapacity, increased price cutting, and profit erosion
3. As sales and profits decline, some firms withdraw.
3. Eliminating Weak Products
1. 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.
2. Maintaining them also delays the aggressive search for replacement products,
creating a lopsided product mix long on yesterday’s breadwinners and short on
tomorrow’s
4. Harvesting and Divesting
1. Harvesting calls for gradually reducing a product or business’s costs while trying
to maintain sales.

1. The first step is to cut R&D costs and plant and equipment investment.
2. The company might also reduce product quality, sales force size, marginal services, and
advertising expenditures, ideally without letting customers, competitors, and employees
know what is happening.

 Harvesting is difficult to execute, yet many mature products warrant this strategy.

1. If the company can’t find any buyers, it must decide whether to liquidate the
brand quickly or slowly. It must also decide how much inventory and service to
maintain for past customers
2. Evidence for the Product Life-Cycle Concept
1. New consumer durables show a distinct takeoff, after which sales increase by
roughly 45 percent a year, but they also show a distinct slowdown, when sales
decline by roughly 15 percent a year
2. Slowdown occurs at 34 percent penetration on average, well before most
households own a new product
3. The growth stage lasts a little more than eight years and does not seem to shorten
over time
4. Informational cascades exist, meaning people are more likely to adopt over time if
others already have, instead of making careful product evaluations. One
implication is that product categories with large sales increases at takeoff tend to
have larger sales declines at slowdown
3. Critique of the Product Life-Cycle Concept
1. Life-cycle patterns are too variable in shape and duration to be generalized
2. Marketers can seldom tell what stage their product is in
4. Market Evolution
 1. Affected by new needs, competitors, technology, channels, and other
developments and change product and brand positioning to keep pace
2. Like products, markets evolve through four stages: emergence, growth, maturity,
and decline.

1. Marketing in a slow-growth economy

1. Five guidelines for improving the odds for marketing success in a slow-growth
economy
1. Explore the Upside of Increasing Investment
2. Get Closer to Customers

 Review Budget Allocations

1. Put Forth the Most Compelling Value Proposition

2. Fine-tune Brand and Product Offerings

1. Brands and sub-brands targeting the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum may be
particularly important during slow growth.
2. Slow times also are an opportunity to prune products with diminished prospects.

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