Defensive Marketing Strategies

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Defensive Marketing Strategies

🔥 A market Leader is a firm that occupies the largest market share in a particular industry. It usually leads that market in terms of: price changes, distribution networks, new product innovations, customer loyalty, and/or the intensity of promotional activities. Some well-known examples of market leaders are Amazon (e-commerce), Coca-Cola (beverages), Google (advertising).

In order to remain the number one player, the market leader has to find offensive strategies to expand the market and defensive ones to protect its current market share.

WHAT IS DEFENSIVE MARKETING?
Defensive Marketing is one range of strategies employed by the Market Leader to protect its current market share. The main aims of this range of strategies are to reduce the probability of attack by a competing firm, divert the attack to less-threatened areas and reduce the intensity of the attack. Like in any strategy, speed and timing is of importance for its success.

TYPES OF DEFENSIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES

1. POSITION DEFENSE: Occupying the most desirable position in the customer's mind in order to make the brand almost impregnable. It can also aim to create or maintain a strategic competitive advantage for the existing brands/products that is difficult to beat by the competitors. For example, the huge number of features, applications and partners of the Android operating system helps Google stay the number in the smartphone market.
2. FLANK DEFENSE: The market leader identifies its weak positions and erects outposts (by deploying resources) to defend these positions from a competitor's potential attack.
3. PREEMPTIVE DEFENSE: This involves methods of attacking the competitor before it can attack the firm. This helps in getting the opponent off-balance thereby delaying a potential attack. It also involves launching multiple new products in the market, forcing the competitor to battle on multiple fronts, thus losing focus.
4. COUNTEROFFENSIVE DEFENSE: It involves launching an attack on the competitor by targeting its flank or launching a pincer attack (attacking both flanks simultaneously) so that the competitor is forced to turn defensive.
5. MOBILE DEFENSE: The market leader stretches itself over various markets, to undergo a market broadening and diversification, in order to tackle the underlying generic need of the market. For example, Petroleum companies may move into non-conventional energy in order to address the underlying generic need of 'Energy'. Market diversification often lands the firm into unrelated businesses.
6. CONTRACTION DEFENSE: Sometimes, the market leader is unable to defend all of its territories. Through strategic withdrawal, the firm may leave weak positions in order to be able to focus on and invigorate its stronger positions.

Sources:
Kotler, P. & Keller, K. L. (2016), "Marketing Management", 2016, pp. 365, 368-370
MBA Skool Team (2018), "Defensive Strategies", 2018, MBASkool.com

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		1 Molokanova Professor, Ukraine
	Defensive Marketing Strategies The market leader must practice either offensive strategies to expand the market or defensive strategies to protect his current market share. Doing both at the same time, to attack and defend seems unrealistic to me. In general, each strategy is unique. And to call it offensive or defense in my opinion does not really matter. Practice shows that as soon as the strategy is fully described and published, it is already outdated.

		1 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Combining Offensive with Defensive Marketing Strategies @Molokanova: Look at a simple analogy like boxing or in fact any other sport from tennis to chess. It's easy to see that one should never focus solely on defensive or offensive tactics. Doing that is a sure recipe to lose any sports game and competition in business. Quite the contrary, you have to constantly try to find clever combinations of offensive and defensive moves, even if this seems difficult at first. See also: The Art of War.

		0 Chanjan Consultant, Peru
	A Non-Strategy is also a Defensive Strategy Dont forget the non-strategy of "not taking any action". or example, if a brand is already a market leader and on top of mind of all clients, you could take this position in order to just let the market decide. This allows you to focus on other things like product development or CRM.

		-1 Molokanova Professor, Ukraine
	Combining Offensive with Defensive Marketing Strategies @Jaap de Jonge: I still think that any unique strategy is tied to the main goal of holding on to a position or expanding the market. Any athlete has a goal to win or draw. And clever combinations of offensive and defensive movements are just fraudulent moves to mislead the enemy.

		1 Helen Strong Business Consultant, South Africa
	Anticipative Realignment Another form of 'defense' can occur when an organisation invests in market research and innovation -- and then anticipating changes in consumer/user needs, summarily concentrates on another need in the market. One example could be the introduction of space travel tours for the upper end of the market. Why bother with providing mundane exotic Greek island cruises when you can sail the galaxy?

		1 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Market Research and Innovation: Attack is the Best Form of Defence @Helen Strong: Thanks for that suggestion. I believe it is what is meant with #5: Mobile Strategy? To the extent that we define "defensive" as protecting your market share and the "market" is taken broadly and includes also the new found and attacked customer needs, you might indeed also consider these 2 things as a defensive strategy. After all, "Attack is the best form of defence" (UK), or, "The best defense is a good offense" (US). Some people might prefer to call market research and innovation: offensive strategies. Anyhow, what matters is not how we call them, but that we perform them.

		1 ARAM NGOMBE Zambia
	Defensive Marketing Strategies @Jaap de Jonge: Thanks a lot for the contributions and the topic at large. All in all, these strategies will need some investment in one way or another, what I've learnt is that we should use a combination of intelligent moves to make customers loyal, either by new products, or have more companies representing you (like Java or Android), concentrate on more profitable markets and leave the unprofitable area to the competitor, anticipative realignment, or simply take no action and continue with product development since your products are known as long as your targets are met, negotiate with those bringing in grey imports etc. I thank the team for this wonderful topic and the contributions. We continue to learn.