What are the characteristics of effective market driven business strategies?

Customer focus (understand the customer needs, wants, and responses towards the products delivered). Competitor intelligence (Understand the competitor just like the customer). Cross-functional cooperation and involvement (abilities to get all business functions to work together in providing superior customer value).

What is market driven strategy?

A “Firm’s policy or strategy guided by market trends and customer needs instead of the firm’s productive capacity or current products.” (BusinessDictionary.com ) A market driven organization has a customer focus, together with awareness of competitors, and an understanding of the market.” (BNET)

What is the logic behind pursuing market driven strategy?

Market driven strategy is a strategy which focuses that the market and the customer’s forms the market and it should be considered the starting point of any business strategy. It is a customer-based strategy where the underlying logic is to find the needs and wants of the customers.

What are the benefits in following a market driven strategy?

A market-driven strategy allows a company to truly understand its market and the customers that are the basis for this market. This effort allows for a more effective integration of all activities that may impact customer value, which in turn affects both return-on-investment and profitability.

What is the difference between market-driven strategy and market driving strategy?

Market-driven companies perform exhaustive market research to fully understand an existing customer need. Market-driving companies focus on a vision for the future. They are unhampered by traditional thinking and industry norms for product development.

What is the marketing strategy process?

The marketing strategy process consists of company vision, company mission, marketing objectives, and the marketing strategy itself. Marketing strategy involves segmenting the market, selecting a target or targets, making differentiation and positioning decisions, and designing the marketing mix.

What are the four major steps in designing a customer driven marketing strategy?

Segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning are four distinct steps that should be included in customer-driven marketing.

What is driven strategy?

A concept-driven strategy is a process for formulating strategy that draws on the explanation of how humans inquire provided by linguistic pragmatic philosophy. Concept-driven strategy therefore starts from agreeing and enacting a set of strategic concepts (organizing principles) that “works best” for an organisation.

What is the difference between market driven strategy and market driving strategy?

How do you get market-driven?

7 Steps to Becoming a Market-Driven Organization

  1. You build the right features.
  2. You get it right the first time.
  3. You are ahead of your customers in understanding how technology innovation will affect the industry.
  4. Your sales are easy.
  5. Your customers love you.
  6. Next Steps are Apparent.

What are the benefits of being customer driven?

Five valuable benefits of customer centricity

  • Understand the before, during and after of the customer’s journey.
  • Focusing on the customer benefits sales.
  • Support new customers and reduce cost to serve.
  • Work with customers to improve operational efficiency.
  • Help customers make significant changes to be highly valued.

Why is it important to study market driving strategy?

A market-driven orientation mediates customer interactions, whereas a market-driving mediates performance and therefore sustainable competitive advantage in the long term. A fourth, and perhaps the most important contribution, can be found in the new insight about the competitive behavior of market-drivers.

Strategic Marketing interests me a lot, and this topic was too tempting for me to explore further. My business acumen have enabled me to dig deeper and its gives me pleasure to unravel the real essence of subject, no matter how tiresome it seems.        

My effort explores the discussion of generic ways to change the composition of the market with some relevant examples that a company takes to direct its path towards gaining a competitive advantage, differentiation and uniqueness. For instance, Uber is one of the world’s largest Taxi Company and owns no vehicles. Facebook is the most popular social media owner that creates no content of its own. Ali baba has recently become one of the most sought after online retailer, and that too has no inventory of its own. Airbnb has no real estate, yet it’s the world’s largest accommodation provider! These companies have something in common and are guided by vision rather than market research (Kumar, Kotler, Scheer 2000). This essay is a means to probe into the essence of niche characteristics.

The Market Orientation of a company and the emergence of Market Driving Vs Market Driven Constructs

Over the last 20 years three general perspectives regarding MO have emerged. The first perspective focuses on values and norms called as ‘Cultural perspective’ (Narver and Slater 1990). The cultural perspective is an organizational culture that creates superior value for buyers and superior performance for the business. The second perspective is the ‘Resource Capability’ by which a firm is able to grasp its external environment and is able to compete ahead of its competitors by anticipating urgent market needs. The third perspective defines MO as a ‘behavioral perspective’, in which a firm pertains to the organization wide intelligence systems with respect to the current and future customer needs. (Kohli and Jaworski 1990). 

However, Jaworski, Kohli and Sahay in 2000 extended the concept of Market orientation to two main distinct approaches which are Market Driven and Market Driving

 Market Driven 

Market driven refers to a business or market approach that is primarily based on the understanding the specific features of the market and then reacting to those features and Behaviours of the players with in that market. This approach seldom thinks out of the box and only attempts to reshape or modify customer’s preferences in the wants and needs of the customer. Thus the success is linked to the superior ability to attract, serve and retain the customer  

Driving Market

Driving market on the other hand influences the market structure in such a way that it enhances the competitive position of the business. It is more customer centric and focuses on finding a new market, something radically innovative and creative in terms of customer need & wants. The success in this case is associated with focus on high levels of learning to introduce competitive platform and quantum leap changes in the value proposition.                     

Market Structure, How Do I define It?

The conceptual framework of Market Structure is composed of two dimensions: ‘Market Structure’ and ‘Market Behaviour’. Market structure means, set of key players and their specific roles in accordance with “the value chain” (Porter 1985). For example, in a manufacturing company this would include players such as the Engineers, the company itself, distributors, sales force and the retailers. To accept the market structure as ‘Given’ means, YOU agree to the conditions of the systems on ‘as it is basis’. This does not change or modify the characteristics of the existing players, rather you agree to abide by the rules of the game and play in a predefined boundary with a submissive approach and just manage to get a fair piece of share important for your survival in the harsh environment- a market driven approach! On the contrary firms who ‘shape’ the market structure, challenge the rules of the game, take aggressive measures and would not hesitate to go an extra mile, even to eliminate their competitors. Driving markets refers to taking proactive and vigilant steps that change the composition of the market by, may be introducing a new product or player in the existing industry e.g. Apple smart phones are “in” vs Nokia is “out”

Market behaviour

 Market behaviour refer to the typical behaviours of the players in the industry value chain. Accepting the market behaviour as ‘Given’ means you understand how and when customers are buying specific products. When should you offer  promotions and when should you offer discounted prices. In contrast, ‘shaping’ the market behaviour entails making customers to focus on the niche attributes of the products previously unconsidered by the customers (e.g. part-time MBA programs, Smart phones, Online Shopping)

 At the end of the day it’s all about “How well is the game, and how can I play it better”

Blue Ocean VS Red Ocean Strategies

                            “Jump in with everyone else or jump right!”

 Red ocean vs Blue Ocean strategy is a concept that is based on a vast study of strategic moves that a firm might take to gain a competitive advantage. Kim and Mauborgne in 2005 came out with a conclusion that it’s not about battling your competitors that gives you success, rather it’s the innovation and uniqueness of your product that gives you an edge. The blue ocean strategy (that drives the market) focuses on creating an uncontested market space making the competition completely irrelevant by breaking the rules and stimulating new demand by offering differentiated and low cost products. However easier said than done, it’s risky, difficult and requires sound research to back one’s decision. For example, Nokia used to rule the world of cellular phones for decades but today its legacy has been taken over by a gust of smart phones that have completely revolutionized the way, a user and his smart phone interacts. Apple and Samsung have completely changed the cellular industry by taking into account the Latent and Manifest needs of the customers. These companies have reshaped the entire market composition directly and indirectly influencing behaviour through cognitive and in cognitive changes. Companies like Apple, Nike and Coca-Cola introduces a new offering every year, and radically innovates its products that heels off and it becomes difficult for the competitors to catch up in fragile time

 Two Generic approaches to Shape the behaviour of the market

 1. Shaping the market (Customer) behaviour directly

 Building customer constraints: Many big and multinational companies play with customer’s buying behaviour directly, by building real or imagined constraints into their buying experience, eventually shaping customer’s expectations. For example, IKEA, a global retailer of furniture provides a beautiful display of its products in a pre-decorated ambiance so the customer does not need any sales associates. Plus the products are positioned in such an intelligent way that it enables the customers to self-bundle their store selection. Another aspects of IKEA worth mentioning is that it forces the customers to shop a particular route throughout the store and no matter how rigid one is at buying, he or she still ends up purchasing their products. These sets of retail tactics do not take the market shape as ‘given’ rather it shapes the consumer behaviour and encourages ‘bundling behaviour’ which may not have been judged by their counterparts

2. Shaping the Market (Customer) behaviour Indirectly

Creating new customer preferences: Shaping the customer behaviour indirectly, involves shaping the ‘perception of offering’ in the market place before it can have its effect on behaviour. This is possible by floating in, a totally new idea. Disneyland was a new concept in 1950s, which became the shout of every town. Virtual machines and haptic are today’s outstanding phenomena’s. Secondly it is also possible to introduce new benefits for the existing products. For instance, Power Pac room coolers with built-in air purifiers, Good Grips line of kitchen utensils that have introduced thick rubber-like grips which have made their products easy to handle and lighter to carry  

Conclusion

It is not important to be the first to float an idea into the market, rather what matters is the extent to which that idea changes the composition of the market. Furthermore, a company can both be driving the market and be market driven at the same time and companies do possess dual strategies. Firms can simultaneously attempt to protect their sources of income (cash cows) while investing into new technologies to build their future business. However, as said before, driving the market involves making an effort in learning and innovation. How much can a market composition be shaped? It entirely depends on the Industry and variation across industries

What is market driving strategies?

Market driving strategy focuses on proactively influencing change in a firm's marketing environment, including customers, competitors and market structure (Jaworski et al., 2000). Market driving literature focuses on single markets and has not been studied in the internationalization context.

What are the characteristics of market

A market-oriented organization uses a customer-centered approach, which means that the most pressing concerns, immediate needs, and personal preferences of the consumer base must be researched. The strategy must be focused on values, culture, and other behavioral traits of the consumer base.

What are the benefits in following a market driven strategy?

A market-driven strategy allows a company to truly understand its market and the customers that are the basis for this market. This effort allows for a more effective integration of all activities that may impact customer value, which in turn affects both return-on-investment and profitability.

What are the four elements of a customer driven marketing strategy?

What are the four elements of a customer-driven marketing strategy?.
Segment the market..
Fulfil customer needs..
Build customer loyalty..
Use customer feedback..