Attack strategies role of marketing channels and communications strategies

Marketing

Attack Strategies, Role of Marketing Channels, and Communications Strategies

Analysis of the Five Attack Strategies

Gaining market share in many market segments requires battling competitors on a daily basis to gain new customers and keep existing ones. The use of attack strategies needs to be part of a broader strategic market plan that looks at the inherent weaknesses of competitors in existing markets and emerging high growth opportunities in new market segments. The frontal, flank, encirclement, and bypass attacks are discussed in this paper as viable strategies for gaining market share while retaining existing customers. The last attack strategy of Guerilla warfare is also analyzed as a means to attaining a strategic market plan.

The frontal attack is one that concentrates on attacking the fundamental aspects of a competitor's marketing strategy. This includes attacking pricing, promotional programs, the product itself, and distribution strategies as well. The use of price as a differentiator by new market entrants is an example of a common frontal attack. Southwest Airlines' use of low-price fares and free baggage when airlines today are beginning to charge for extra bags is an example of a front attack strategy. Linksys, the personal networking division of Cisco systems, also relies heavily on frontal attack strategies to gain access to new markets, including the higher-end enterprise networking market. Linksys also relies on their production efficiencies learned from serving the low-end of the wireless market to gain cost and price advantages in the enterprise networking markets. These markets' needs are dominated by the need for connecting thousands of users to wireless and wired networks. By using a frontal attack strategy with its Linksys Division, Cisco has been able to drive 3 Com and other competitors from the high-end of the enterprise networking market.

The essence of a flank attack is to seek out the geographic and segment-specific weaknesses of a competitor and then capitalize on them. Examples of this are pervasive in travel services and hospitality, especially business travelers is the primary segment. Marriott's approach to offering safe, clean rooms and most importantly, creating a strong culture of customer service is a flank attack used successfully against dozens of hospitality competitors. Marriott concentrates on service and responsiveness to customer requests, and has created a brand that is synonymous with excellent quality in their industry. Flank attacks also happen in the software industry, where salesforce.com displaced the larger and more cost-burdened competitors Oracle, SAP, and Siebel. Salesforce.com created the first viable business model based on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) which is the leasing of software on a periodic basis, nearly a decade ago. Today Oracle and SAP are just now beginning to react with their product strategies to the successful flank attack of Salesforce.com on their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) businesses.

The third type of attack, called an encirclement attack, is a deliberate strategy to gain market share by encircling a competitor. Microsoft has long battled open source software in general and the popularity of the Linux operating system specifically using encirclement attack, yet has only had limited success. Conversely the partnerships of open source databases vendors including MySQL and others have created a strong alliance that has forced Microsoft's SQL Server database team to create customized connectors for these open source applications. Open source, first the subject of an encirclement strategy, is now implementing its own on Microsoft's operating system business. The Linux operating system is now pre-installed on many of the world's leading hardware manufacturers' laptops, desktop and server systems. The business development teams and strategies representing Linux have struck back at Microsoft with an encirclement strategy that started with Microsoft's OEM partners first and progressed to their enterprise, or large business customers.

Bypass attack is a marketing strategy that concentrates on defining and attacking uncontested markets that competitors either have not yet discovered, or are so new and emerging that no one has found them yet. The concept of finding uncontested markets was defined by Kim & Mauborgne (2004) in their book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Inherent in the definition of new markets is the use of a bypass strategy on the part of incumbent market leaders who, according to the research completed (Kim, Mauborgne, 2004), have the advantage of finding new markets based on accumulated experience. The authors are quick to point out that finding uncontested markets has much more to do with the hard work of viewing customers' unmet needs from a different perspective than just price, availability, or features differentiation. In fact Kim & Mauborgne (2004) point out that a red ocean strategy is one that relies purely on price as the competitive point of differentiation. Their contention is that seeing the unmet needs of customers from an entirely fresh and often not-before-considered perspective can lead to successful bypass attacks.