Marketing Strategy from the Masters (Collection)

40. What Is Strategy?

I find it interesting that there are so many different methods and theories about strategy, yet few describe a process for how to create them. Michael Porter defines strategies as fitting into three generic categories: (1) cost leadership (competing on the basis of low production and distribution costs), (2) differentiation (superior products or service), and (3) focus (on only a few product or market segments).¹ He says the evidence of strategy in a company is when it “performs different activities from rivals or performs similar activities in different ways.” Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, authors of The Discipline of Market Leaders, write that companies should focus strategy on one of three value disciplines: Operational ...