Growth in mature markets becomes increasingly difficult; the only way to find ways to grow is to have a systematic framework to look for breakthrough opportunities. In ‘Identifying and Solving Marketing Problems With Gap Analysis’, Professor John A. Weber of Notre Dame has created a great framework that allows you to analyse the gaps in […]
Read more
Digital marketing is evolving as fast as any other medium on our tablets, smartphones, Google Glass and beyond. To learn about what the future may bring to this marketing genre, HBR reached out to Gerd Leonhard, an author, strategic advisor, CEO of TheFuturesAgency, and someone whom The Wall Street Journal calls “one of the leading […]
Read more
Professor Stephen Brown is a maverick! He is a professor of marketing research at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and a visiting professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. In his book Marketing: The Retro Revolution and in a brilliant 2001 HBR article – Torment the Customers (They’ll Love It) […]
Read more
The 2*2 Matrix is a simple but invaluable tool to understand problems and scenarios. And it can be used in any situation. Some of the best known models that most of us are likely to be familiar with are based on the 2*2 matrix – the BCG Model and the Ansoff Matrix being examples – […]
Read more
It is Steve Jobs who said that the definition of a superbly designed product is one that you would WANT TO LICK! They are that attractive! And it is the ‘lickable’ brands that stand apart – Apple in computers, tablets and MP3 players and telephones, BMW in cars, Nike in shoes, Starbucks in cafes, Sony […]
Read more
In many industries, price wars have invariably happened. All of you will remember the airlines price war that started in 1992 and bled many airlines around the world. Mobile service providers in India have had price wars at various times. So are price wars good or bad? How do you safeguard against a price war […]
Read more
I think we would all agree that differentiating your company/product/brand from that of competition is the road to sustained and profitable success. But how does one look for new points of differentiation? Ian C. MacMillan and Rita Gunther McGrath point out that “finding ways to differentiate one’s company doesn’t have to be an act of […]
Read more
In a utopian world, where a brand has unlimited budgets, one wouldn’t even be asking the question. However, because brands have limited ad budgets and because one should, in any case, spend optimum resources behind advertising, the question of Reach vs. Frequency assumes great significance. The debate is NOT one-sided. Amazingly, there are a large […]
Read more
Marketing Myopia is an important paper written by Theodore Levitt in 1960. It had a major impact on marketing as we know it today. This is what Wikipedia has on Marketing Myopia: “Marketing Myopia suggests that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products. […]
Read more
On the Facebook page of this site, a member – Prakash Karigoudar – wrote: “You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.” So here’s an example of a company whose customer service is legendary. <span ‘times=”” new=”” roman’,=”” serif;=”” font-size:=”” […]
Read more