Understanding Markets and Strategy

In order to expand your business in existing and into new and diverse markets, it is vital that strategies and plans can be developed with realistic prospects of success. Understanding Markets and Strategy explains the context, meaning and value of markets. It shows you how to analyze them, develop appropriate strategies and respond appropriately to changing competitive dynamics, ensuring that resources are used to create the greatest chances of success. Debunking myths around how markets are defined, it explores how to exploit the assets you currently possess and how to develop new assets for the target market. It also explores the implications for the strategies, resources, competencies and capabilities of expansion into international territories on your organization. The author explains, with practical tools and techniques, how marketing needs to be a product of, and consistent with, strategic competitive and corporate analysis. Ideal for Directors and senior managers as well as strategic planners and marketing managers, it provides you with everything you need to understand markets and to create a strategic context for the development of credible and robust commercial strategies and plans to exploit them. "[A]ims to help senior managers understand markets so that marketing strategies can be developed in context, and investments in products, services and marketing can be pursued with real prospects for success in practice."--John Gibbs "Leading Business Books "Chapter - 1: What is a market?; Chapter - 2: What makes markets attractive?; Chapter - 3: Where do markets exist?; Chapter - 4: Have to buy or discretionary buy?; Chapter - 5: What do buyers want to buy?; Chapter - 6: Products and Services; Chapter - 7: Products/ Service Benefits and Price; Chapter - 8: Market Segmentation; Chapter - 9: How to analyse markets; Chapter - 10: Putting company in the context of the market; Chapter - 11: What is strategy and why is the strategy process so important?; Chapter - 12: What is competitive strategy?; Chapter - 13: What is corporate strategy?; Chapter - 14: Developing a marketing strategy; Chapter - 15: Understanding business competencies, capabilities and capacity; Chapter - 16: Exploiting business assets and developing new assets for the market; Chapter - 17: Market entry; Chapter - 18: Competing in markets; Chapter - 19: Understanding when to exit markets; Chapter - 20: International expansion; Chapter - 21: Managing Strategic Change; Chapter - 22: Making it work