4. النص بالانجليزي كيف يمكن لأتباع السوق أو المتخصصين التنافس بفعالية؟ (ص: 366)
مصطفى4. كيف يمكن لأتباع السوق أو المتخصصين التنافس بفعالية؟ (ص: 366)
Market-Follower Strategies
Theodore Levitt argues that a strategy of product imitation might be as profitable as a strategy of product
innovation.
44 In “innovative imitation,” as he calls it, the innovator bears the expense of developing the new product,
getting it into distribution, and informing and educating the market. The reward for all this work and risk
is normally market leadership. However, another firm can come along and copy or improve on the new product.
Although it may not overtake the leader, the follower can achieve high profits because it did not bear any of the
innovation expense.
Many companies prefer to follow rather than challenge the market leader. Patterns of “conscious parallelism”
are common in capital-intensive, homogeneous-product industries such as steel, fertilizers, and chemicals. The
opportunities for product differentiation and image differentiation are low, service quality is comparable, and price
sensitivity runs high. The mood in these industries is against short-run grabs for market share because that only
provokes retaliation. Instead, most firms present similar offers to buyers, usually by copying the leader. Market
shares show high stability.
That’s not to say market followers lack strategies. They must know how to hold current customers and win a
fair share of new ones. Each follower tries to bring distinctive advantages to its target market—location, services,
financing—while defensively keeping its manufacturing costs low and its product quality and services high. It must
also enter new markets as they open up. “Marketing Insight: The Costs and Benefits of Fast Fashion” describes how
a set of firms is changing the fashion industry, both for better and for worse.
Followers must define a growth path, but one that doesn’t invite competitive retaliation. We distinguish three
broad strategies:
1. Cloner—The cloner emulates the leader’s products, name, and packaging with slight variations. Technology
firms are often accused of being cloners: Similar-sounding knockoffs copy mobile-messaging app maker
WhatsApp’s products, and Berlin-based Rocket Internet has copied competitors’ business models and
attempted
to out-execute them.45 Ralston Foods, now owned by ConAgra, sells imitations of name-brand
cereals in look-alike boxes as part of its “Value+Brands” platform. Its Apple Cinnamon Tasteeos (versus
Cheerios), Cocoa Crunchies (versus Cocoa Puffs), and Corn Biscuits (versus Corn Chex) take aim at successful
General Mills brands, but with much lower price points.46
2. Imitator—The imitator copies some things from the leader but differentiates on packaging, advertising,
pricing, or location. The leader doesn’t mind as long as the imitator doesn’t attack aggressively. Fernandez
Pujals grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and took Domino’s pizza home delivery idea to Spain, where he
borrowed $80,000 to open his first store in Madrid. His Telepizza chain now holds about 70 percent of the
Spanish pizza delivery market and operates more than 1,200 stores in Europe and Latin America.47
3. Adapter—The adapter takes the leader’s products and adapts or improves them. The adapter may choose to
sell to different markets, but often it grows into a future challenger, as many Japanese firms have done after
improving products developed elsewhere.
Note that we can contrast these three follower strategies from an illegal and unethical follower strategy.
Counterfeiters duplicate the leader’s product and packages and sell them on the black market or through disreputable
dealers. High-tech firms like Apple and luxury brands like Rolex have been plagued by the counterfeiter
marketing insight
The Costs and Benefits of Fast Fashion
In the fashion industry, styles and tastes can change quickly, and some
savvy businesses and retailers are developing business models to allow
them to quickly capitalize. Notable among them are Sweden’s Hennes
& Mauritz, or H&M, and Spain’s Inditext with its Zara brand. These
firms can take a new garment or accessory from design to store in a
mere two weeks. Their success is forcing established luxury brands
like Burberry, Chanel, and Saint Tropez to speed up and increase the
frequency of their new product introductions beyond the traditional
fashion-week-driven fall and spring collections.
By sourcing more than half its products from Spain, Portugal, and
Morocco, Indetix pays more in production, but thanks to its tightly integrated
supply chain, the company can quickly stock and supply what is
selling and avoid having to discount what is not. Because there is almost
always something new at appealing price points, shoppers always
have a reason to stop by and check out what has just arrived. H&M has
adopted a similar fast-fashion model that allows it to closely follow and
respond to what is selling in the marketplace.
Both firms generate most of their sales in Europe—four-fifths
for H&M and two-thirds for Zara—so they are furiously moving into
China, Russia, and elsewhere and opening up hundreds of new
stores. But this rapid growth and continual replenishment has both an environmental and social cost that fast-fashion companies are trying
to address.
The social cost came to light when a tragic 2012 fire in a subcontracted
Bangladesh garment factory killed 111 workers. Competition
in the $18 billion fashion industry is fierce, and with a focus on lean
production costs, safety concerns took a backseat. Prodded by labor
rights activists, Western firms finally signed a building and fire safety
agreement that provided greater regulation to improve worker safety.
Another negative by-product of the fast-fashion business model is
the environmental cost of making and disposing of clothing with a limited
shelf life. To deflect some of the criticism, H&M adopted a series of
“Recycle, Resell, or Reuse” programs and activities. Products were made
using fewer, recycled materials, and customer were able to trade in old
clothes for vouchers for new ones. The company also required all contract
suppliers to sign a code of conduct to ensure good working conditions.
Sources: William Mauldin and Suzanne Kapner, “Wal-Mart and Other U.S.
Retailers Commit to Factory Safety in Bangladesh,” Wall Street Journal, July
10, 2013; Katarina Gustafsson, “H&M’s New Love for Old Clothes,” Bloomberg
Businessweek, July 1, 2013; Kyle Stock, “H&M Has Been Slower than Its Fast-
Fashion Rival in Escaping Europe,” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 13, 2013;
Calum Macleod, “H&M, Zara to Sign Bangladesh Factory Safety Accord,” USA
Today, May 13, 2013; Oliver Balch, “H&M: Can Fast Fashion and Sustainability
Ever Really Mix?,” The Guardian. May 3, 2013; Renee Dudley, Arun Devanth, and
Matt Townsend, “The Hidden Cost of Fast Fashion: Worker Safety,” Bloomberg
Businessweek, February 7, 2013; Lucy Siegle, “Is H&M the New Home of Ethical
Fashion?,” The Guardian, April 7, 2012; “Fashion Forward,” The Economist, March
24, 2012; Gerard Cachon and Robert Swinney, “The Value of Fast Fashion: Quick
Response, Enhanced Design, and Strategic Consumer Behavior,” Management
Science 57 (April 2011); Andrew Roberts, “H&M, Zara Fast Fashion Pressures
Luxury to Speed Up,” www.bloomberg.com, September 30, 2010.