Sample Essay

The marketing strategy is a business strategy adopted by the organization to increase its revenues by increasing its sales and therefore arriving at the position of where the company has a sustainable competitive advantage. Michael Porter has provided extensive literature on the subject of competitive advantage. Through his works he has highlighted that companies can achieve competitive advantage if they employ cost leadership, differentiation in their product and service offerings and concentration in the form of niche targeting. Cost leadership can be attained by retailers and manufacturers by operating in an efficient manner and reducing the costs associated with waste. The lower prices can then be used by retailers to attract the customers who are sensitive to fluctuations in the product price. By using differentiation retailers can target those customers who are not sensitive to the changes in price. With differentiation, the retailer can provide the customers with products that are different from those that already exit in the market. Increasingly companies have also started to use concentration based strategies that target a small and specialised segment of the market. Such strategies are called niche targeting strategies.