Competitive Business Strategies and Marketing Planning

Core Business Strategies

• Cost Leadership Strategy: This leads to establishing a position that has a significant cost advantage over its competitors.
• Differentiation Strategy: The business competes by offering something unique and unparalleled by its competitors.
• Focused and Targeted Strategy: The business concentrates on a certain group of consumers, a specific set of needs, or certain technology segments, competing in this segment via either cost leadership or differentiation.

The Marketing Plan

A Marketing Plan is an advanced and rational conception of a future action that a human group wants to make as a result of the evaluation of means and ends. It determines what to do, how to do it, when to allocate resources, and how many resources are required.

• Marketing Plan: Why and how?
• Marketing Program: When to do it?
• Marketing Budget: How much money?

Marketing Strategy and the Marketing Mix

Key components of a marketing strategy include:

• Developing goals and selecting target markets.
• Making decisions on branding.
• Determining the appropriate Marketing Mix to reach target markets:
  • 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place (Distribution), and Promotion.
  • 7 Ps (for services): The 4 Ps plus People, Processes, and Physical Presence.

Consumer Analysis and Market Share

A potential consumer is any natural person or legal entity who needs the product or service offered, has the ability to buy, and the willingness to purchase.

• Actual Consumers: Those currently consuming the product.
• Latent Consumers: Those who do not yet consume the product for various reasons but will do so in the near future.

Market Share: Calculated as (Sales / Total Real Market).

Socioeconomic Status (SES) Classifications

High SES

• A: Highest income in the community; enjoys all luxuries and amenities.
• B: High income; possesses almost all modern luxuries and amenities.
• C-1: Income levels that permit covering needs without difficulty.

Medium SES

• C-2: Covers basic needs and only some additional comforts.
• C-3: Covers basic needs and few amenities.

Low SES

• D: Fixed and stable but reduced income; lives under narrow financial constraints.
• E: Lacks steady income and faces extreme poverty.

Company Classification by Size

• Micro: Less than 2,400 UF.
• Small: 2,400 to 25,000 UF.
• Medium: 25,001 to 50,000 UF.
• Large: More than 50,000 UF.

Marketing and Segmentation Strategies

• Undifferentiated Segmentation Strategy: Reaching all segments with a single strategy.
• Differentiated Strategy: A specific marketing and demarketing plan for each segment.
• Concentrated Strategy: Concentrating all marketing efforts on only one segment.