Competitive Strategy

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing materials, this module sheds light on the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing strategies to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace. The module enables marketers to make decisions that account for competitors’ likely responses. The module introduces processes for understanding the opportunities and challenges of competitive play, guiding choosing contexts that enable success while avoiding those in which profitability will be elusive. It also examines how marketers can create opportunities by restraining competitive forces and opening up new ways to compete more conducive to growth, bringing insights into how consumers respond to marketplace competition and examining how companies can frame competitive games to their advantage in brand positioning and marketing communications.

This module includes an Interactive Illustration that explains how the prisoner’s dilemma theory applies to pricing issues in industries with two dominant competitors (Pepsi and Coke). It also includes 3 video clips: (1) “The Two Choices to Make in Strategy,” which distills strategy into two basic questions: “Where will you play?” and “How will you win there?”; (2) “Marketing Myopia,” an animation presenting Theodore Levitt’s concept of marketing myopia and identifying ways to avoid it; and (3) “Porter’s Six Forces,” which explains the key elements of Michael Porter’s strategy model.