Challengers are found mostly in industries experiencing high fixed costs, high inventory costs, and stagnant primary demand.
They may either go for price cuts, a promotion offering special inducements, coupons, or premiums, product improvements or modification, wider distribution, legal attacks, and so on. In order to be successful in such an attack, the advertisement should be outstanding to get rid of the commercial clutter problem, and the product should be of superior quality. This is again could be a risky strategy to be pursued. Customers equally appreciate it since pursuing such a strategy by various firms will lead to the fuller coverage of the markets varied needs. Smaller firms may decide to launch a series of prices as well as promotional attacks in different territories of their large opponents. The market challenger should, therefore, select the specific attack strategies that he may launch.
There is no substitute for aggressive advertising and promotion in this age of extreme competition. Mere reliance on one specific attack strategy will not bring the desired level of return for the firm. The commonality among these strategies lay in how the AP could serve to combine or break factor(s) for regrouping. Market challengers are the firms trying to catch the leaders position and fighting hard to increase their market shares. Both Chinese and U.S. classes taught computational strategies that involved the AP. In the encirclement attack, a firm decides to attack his opponents suddenly. A challenger must first determine a strategic objective (such as to increase market share) and then decide whom to attack. An aggressive frontal attack to be successful must be backed up by stronger muscle than the defender has or may use. The challenger should know that firms protect their fronts usually keep their sides or flanks as well as rears unprotected because of their concentration on fronts. It will help the attacker to make a more or less permanent position on the opponents territories.
This will obviously help the firm to cover a greater portion of the total market. First, the firm must offer a comparable product.
In this attack, the attacker offers everything his opponents offer to the market. The availability of a larger variety gives buyers a range of options from which they can select desired ones. Such mobilization of resources by the opponents cannot ensure the protection of any front fully since resources are distributed among different fronts. A market challenger may decide to attack the market leader. Attacking the market leader is a high-risk but potentially high-payoff strategy if the leader is not serving the market well. It could be a successful attack if, in response, the defending firm does not cut its price or if the firm is successful in convincing people of the superiority of its product in terms of price and equal to competitors products in other terms. Here he decides to identify the easier markets and launches attacks there.
If, on the other hand, it decides to attack others, its objective should be to wipe them out of the market. Once the opponents are identified, and objectives are determined, the firm is in a position to launch the attack strategy against the opponent(s). The attack is launched simultaneously on all fronts. Or a challenger might attack an industry as a whole or a pervasive way of thinking that doesnt adequately address customer needs. In this strategy, the attacker avoids his opponents on direct fronts. In such a situation, the opponents become puzzled and start protecting all fronts. They are the geographic dimension and the segmental dimension. The challenger may find firms of its own size that are performing poorly in terms of customers needs satisfaction and are suffering from cash problems.
If the firm decides to attack the market leader, its objective should be to capture a leaders portion. As we have mentioned earlier, the market challenger should first identify the alternative specific attack strategies and then combine those that will yield the most return. In selecting which strategies to be combined, the firm must consider its objectives, resources, and strengths.
If a thoughtful decision is taken, it could be a highly profitable one, particularly if the leader is a false leader. In the following sections, we shall discuss the general and specific attack strategies that the market challenger may launch. Under this strategy, the challenger launches an attack on, first of all, the stronger sides of the opponents. The challenger may decide to attack the leader by spending heavily on advertising and promotion.
In particular, teachers in both countries discussed the shortcut of adding a 0 when multiplying by tens. (Teaching Early Algebra through Example-Based Problem Solving: Insights from Chinese and U.S. These firms can either attack the leader and other competitors in an aggressive bid for further market share as market challengers, or they can choose to not rock the boat as market followers. (vitag.Init = window.vitag.Init || []).push(function () { viAPItag.display("vi_770593760") }). Before deciding on the attack strategies to be pursued, a challenger firm must define his strategic objective(s) and select the opponent(s) to be attacked. If the firm finds it difficult to launch an aggressive or pure defense, it is wise to launch a modified frontal attack, the most common of which involves cutting its price vis-a-vis the opponents. A firm can apply the modified attack in two ways.
It is, therefore, advisable for the smaller firms to launch guerrilla attacks against their giant competitors. There are two strategic dimensions along which the flank attack can be directed.
There are quite a few specific attack strategies from which the market challenger may choose ones that best suit his need and ability. Such a move will definitely bring considerable fruit to him in terms of long-run success. If the attacker is successful in this, he can then launch an attack in terms of the products price. This may require investment in new production technology. Given clear opponents and objectives, five attack strategies for challengers are: Academic library - free online college e textbooks - info{at}ebrary.net - 2014 - 2022, (Strategic Management in the 21st Century. underperforming and underfinanced, have aging products, are charging excessive prices, or are not satisfying customers in other ways. On the other hand, an un-thoughtful decision to attack the leader could be a highly risky one because the leader with muscle could destroy all the challengers efforts using its enormous strengths. The answer lies in the territory occupied by the opponent. Which of the available alternatives should the firm choose? Therefore, it is evident that some firms fail to assume the challengers position though they attempt to attack the leader. Frequent defeats harass the opponents, and ultimately their motivations fall.
Failure to do so and the inability to sustain the attack will be a ruinous one on the part of the attacker. Third, he may decide to jump over others backs the leapfrogging capitalizing the new technology.
This will give the firm the opportunity to exploit the unmet or improperly met needs of the consumers and thus cash the gap.
The challenger continues charging the higher price for quite some time and gradually reduces the price as he captures a sizeable portion of the market. If the majority of the buyers look at price only, not the quality or features of the product, this strategy will succeed. A vacuum is thus created where the challenger can easily enter. Some, such as PepsiCo and Ford, are quite large in their own right. These are too broad in terms of their resource involvement and coverage. Such a decision should be a well-thought one in order to be successful. He should then launch his product aggressively in those under-served areas and overthrow the opponents. There has been a lot of developments in the field of distribution. He should then modify his product or develop a new product aimed at meeting those needs.
This is quite a different strategy than the previous ones. A market challenger can bring changes in the services offered by him to make his product more competitive. In order to be successful, four conditions must be met.
They are called challengers because they throw direct challenges to the leader by penetrating his market domain.
A flanking strategy can thus give a firm a real opportunity to prosper by identifying gaps and filling those by his offer. Marketers of tangible products offer services as well with their products. The bypass attack may be launched in three ways. This is the gap the challenger should exploit. Manufacturing costs can be reduced by taking several measures. To get rid of this problem, the challenger pursuing this strategy should try to improve its product quality but charge the previous price. There are quite a number of options available to the market challenges that may be applied to attack the opponent(s). This tempts the customers, and they are unable to refuse his offers. There are firms in the particular business who will be willing to offer much cheaper products. A directed patrol is a focused patrol; that is, patrol resources are concentrated at the times and in the (Crime and Intelligence Analysis: An Integrated Real-Time Approach).
The alternative specific attack strategies are discussed below. Many market challengers have gained ground or even overtaken the leader. In the guerrilla attack, the firm decides to attack his opponents on a small scale quite frequently, suddenly, and on different fronts. However, with the development of information technology in the beginning Now, the supreme requirements of generalship are a clear perception, the harmony of his host, a profound strategy coupled with far-reaching plans, an understanding of the seasons, and an ability to examine the human factors. The objectives of the market challenger vary as its opponent to attack vary. Porters, (Inherent Strategies in Library Management), In the latter half of the 1980s, universities and university libraries felt the need to expand their services to secure and maintain a competitive edge over other. In the case of the opponent(s) to attack, the firm may decide to attack the market leader or firms of its own size, or small local and regional firms. On the other hand, in the segmental flanking attack, the firm should find out the needs of the market either not served by the market leader or are not reasonably satisfied by the available products. The smaller firms are neither in a position to go for frontal attacks nor launch the flank attacks. Many small local and regional firms also fail meeting customers needs properly with respect to quality, service, price, fashion, and others. He sometimes offers the market more than his opponents do.
Some may serve the market with old and outdated products among the firms of its own sizes, some may sell their products at unreasonably high prices, and others may fail to meet customers needs in other aspects. This is aggressive and risky since the attacker here overlooks the weaknesses of the defending firm rather than directly attacking his strengths. By bringing further innovation in the products distribution, the challenger can attack the leader very successfully. A price-discount strategy will only be a successful one if the above four conditions prevail. Then, an aggressive frontal attack puts the firm in serious trouble if not backed by the required strengths. If the challengers strengths are more than the defender, and if he can sustain the attack, he will likely win the war. The very name suggests that the challenger here offers his product at a lower price than his competitors prices. In 2004, an analysis of the competitive environment surrounding libraries was carried out by Eric Flower.
Firms decide to go for the guerrilla attack may use both conventional and unconventional competitive weapons in their attacks. Such an attack, if successful, could yield considerable fruit to the firm. Bringing innovation in the products distribution can also give the challenger a competitive advantage. (How to Outthink, Outmaneuver, and Outperform Your Competitors: Lessons from the Masters of Strategy). The production costs can be minimized by efficient purchases, keeping wages and salaries at an optimum level, owning efficient production equipment, and so on. Price could be charged less to induce people to buy his product. Fourth, the market leader does not react to such an offer by the challenger. Third, the offer should be made to a price-sensitive market. The market challengers may launch quite a number of strategies to attack the market leader as well as other competing firms. The five alternative attack strategies are; A frontal attack is a strategy where the firm launches a direct attack against the opponent.
In this situation, the opponents are likely to concentrate heavily on their fronts, leaving flanks and rears unguarded.
In the following section, we shall concentrate on the strategies that market challengers may pursue in this regard. Such attacks demoralize his opponents since they are likely to lose in the battle.
For the guerilla attack to be successful, it must be a well-thought and backed by stronger attacks if opponents react instantly and aggressively. It could be a very effective strategy if the firm can really come up with something that is able to meet the unmet or partially met the needs of the consumers. The bypass attack is an indirect attack that may be launched by the market challenger.
If manufacturing costs can be kept at a minimum level, the product can be offered to the market at a very competitive price. In many police departments, the typical and usual response to any identified crime pattern, crime series, hot spot, crime trend, or crime problem is the directed patrol (Bruce and Ouellette, 2008).
Free delivery, return, replacement, free installation, free accessory, etc., are some of the usual services offered by marketers. Firms that are not industry leaders are often called runner-up or trailing firms. The other name of the flank attack is peripheral attack. First, the attacker may develop unrelated products and launch them into the market. These firms could easily be targeted and attacked by challenger firms. The price that he charges is also higher than the leader. Under this strategy, the challenger develops a larger variety of the existing product.
Attacking the leader in this way is termed as a product-proliferation attack. The challenging firms that fail to penetrate the leaders areas become market followers. According to Flower, when libraries think of strategic management, they usually fail to take into account competitive strategy. The firms in the high-technology business may successfully pursue this strategy. In order to attack, the firm should identify the segments that are either poorly served or un-served by the leader. This will help him to capture the market with an improved product that will replace the old one. Here the attacker launches a superior quality product compared to the market leader.
To launch a geographic flank attack, the challenger should, first of all, identify the geographic areas where his opponents are performing poorly. First of all, he should identify and choose a number of specific attack strategies to be pursued and then combine those into an integrated one. Second, the attacker can do everything possible to cut down its production costs.
The attacks could be a few heavy ones or frequent minor ones.
This will no doubt weaken the morale of the opponents, and he can easily penetrate the market of them taking this advantage. In this section we provide a window into the activities of music exporters based upon the Expox-t Strategies survey conducted in 2018. Providing teleshopping or electronic shopping facilities to customers could be an example of a distribution-innovation strategy. You know, by this time, the general strategies available to a firm. This helps him to avoid direct/frontal attacks, which are often very costly. The fronts, rears, and sides are attacked at a time, and all of a sudden.
Here the challenger adds a new innovative feature/s to the existing product or develops a new innovative product and offers that to the market with the aim of attacking the market leader.
Bowlin and his colleagues point out that Threat assessment is not a final product, but the beginning of the management process. Elementary Classrooms). First, it can offer products similar to the leader in all respect except the price. The market leader can be attacked in this line by offering more lucrative services. Another option is to attack small local and regional firms. This strategy can be successfully launched only when the attacker is in a better position compared to his opponents in terms of resources and strengths. Here the challenger engages himself heavily in Research and Development activities to come up with an improved product.
If a firm decides to pursue this strategy, it may offer an average or low-quality product at a lower price. Increasing market share in most of the instances is found to be the strategic objective of the challengers. On the other hand, there are instances of successes, i.e., some successfully overthrew the leader.
This is another opportunity for the attacker.
The frontal attack may be launched by offering similar products (in terms of features or performance), matching the price with the defender, or following the same promotion and distribution policies as followed by the defender.
Second, he may concentrate on new geographical areas not reached by his opponents. Second, the market must be convinced of the comparability of the offer. Flank basically means sides in this respect. If identified, a firm can successfully attack such firms, provided measures could be taken to minimize customers expectation gap. Theories of Strategic Management), Competitive strategy is a strategic management theory for establishing differential superiority of specific companies or competing businesses of product markets to achieve a companys ideals and objectives. The challenger can attack firms its own size that are, FiGURE 7.3 The Concept of Optimal Market Share.