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Marketing As Strategy
book

Marketing As Strategy

by Nirmalya Kumar
May 2004
Intermediate to advanced
288 pages
6h 40m
English
Harvard Business Review Press
Content preview from Marketing As Strategy

THREE

From Selling Products to Providing Solutions

Customers buy holes, not drills.

IN MANY INDUSTRIES, especially in business-to-business (B2B) markets, suppliers of “products” struggle to withstand commoditization. Competitors rapidly copy new features, effectively destroying product differentiation, and sophisticated buyers refuse to pay any brand premium—at least not a premium that would cover the required additional marketing costs to build and maintain it.

Companies confronting commoditization have few strategic options. They can become a low-cost provider in their industries, but that requires relentless cost-cutting, generally by moving production overseas to low-cost locations, trading low margins for (hopefully) higher volume, revealing ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781422163399