MARKETINGWARFAREAttacking the Leader

Ground rules

Know your strength and weakness relative to the market leader.

Estimate the strength of the leader's position.

Find a weakness in the leader's strength and attack at that point.

Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible.

Do not fight head-on with a market leader unless you have at least three times its resources.

Offensive Strategies

Frontal Attack

Encirclement Attack

Flanking Attack

By pass Attack

Guerrilla Attack

Be the Opposite Attack

Frontal Attack

Pure Frontal Attack

The cola giants have been battling

on all marketing fronts to dominate

the carbonated soft drink market.

Frontal Attack

Limited Frontal Attack

Nirma exploited the entry level in

washing power market, a gap not

addressed by HUL then.

Frontal Attack

Price Based Frontal Attack

Fierce price war took

place between HUL and

P&G

Frontal Attack

Research & Design

Ujala dislodged Robin Blue from its

market leader position in whitener

segment by launching a liquid

version of the product.

Flank Attack

Geographical Flanking

Majority of profits come from the international areas where competition is

not fierce or non existent.

Flank Attack

Segmented Flanking

Instead of taking cola giants head on Red bull decided to focus on energy drink segment.

Encirclement Attack

Product Encirclement

Licensed JAVA software to companies and developers for all sorts of consumer devices. As the products began to go digital, JAVA started

appearing in a wide range of gadgets.

Encirclement Attack

Market Encirclement

By tapping into every distribution channel for watches, Seiko took over

as much shelf space as possible.

Bypass Attack

New Product/Technology

Niche area in telephony services. No competition from Airtel and Vodafone.

Bypass Attack

Diversifying (new geography; product)

ITC diversified from cigarettes to

FMCG

Guerrilla Attack

Jyoti Laboratories in order to hold on to its share in the

cloth whitener market, launched mosquito repellant products to reduce Reckitt

& Benckiser’s focus on whitener market.

Be the Opposite

Dell Computers became the worlds

largest seller of personal computers by

choosing a direct orders through phone

instead of retail stores.

Common Attacking methods

Price discounts

Cheaper goods

Prestige goods

Product proliferation

Product innovation

Service innovation

Distribution innovation

Process innovation

Advertising innovation

Thank you

Navanitha Krishna G (MS12A045)Prabakaran S (MS12A056)

Roshini Anna John (MS12A068)Santosh JK (MS12A075)