Marketing Insights From a to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know

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Marketing Insights from A to Z

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ingly resemble each other and are forced to compete on price, strate-
gically positioned companies avoid the bloodbath by following the
beat of a different drummer.
Looking at strategy this way prevents companies from thinking
they have a strategy because they are going on the Internet, or out-
sourcing, or restructuring, or acquiring other firms, or adopting cus-
tomer relationship management. These business initiatives can easily
be copied. They don’t define how a business is going about building
a sustainable strategy.
One of the best rules for strategy development is to strive to
find out what the target customers like and do more of it; and find
out what they dislike and do less of it. This means spending time in
the marketplace and seeing what matters. As stated by Al Ries and
Jack Trout,