Choosing a Focus for Profitability

The Market v Productduality for choices dealing with profitability must be applied Level by Level (i.e. Mode/Stage by Mode/Stage), focusing on the challenges and commercial imperatives at each Level.

THEE Note: Key phrases within the Centres are provided to epitomize a wide variety of relevant principles affecting values and actions taken in each Centre.

L1: Ensuring Profitable Operations

Operations must be geared towards production of items to sell, and at the same time be geared to instil confidence that items that are produced can be sold at a profit. Businesses must actually have systems and people in place to market and sell, as well as to operate and produce. Product- and market-orientations are inextricably fused.

This Level is Balanced: L1_B.

L2: Battling with Competitors

SWOT analyses monitor the whole field (company products and their markets) and will always be important. Competitors can target anything: suppliers, distributors, customers, key staff, product range, prices, &c. Paying too much attention to one part of the business or aspect of profitability will lead to weaknesses elsewhere.

This Level is Balanced: L2_B.

L3: Promoting Effectively

Marketing communications can either focus on the particular qualities of a product (i.e. Product-centric) or on determining potential purchasers (i.e. Market-centric). These two possibilities, while remaining independent choices, are linked.

This Level has 2 polar Centres: L3_P & L3_M.

Dominance: Publicizing product specifications (L3_P) is closer to operations and more definite and controllable by the business, so it is naturally given higher value than analysing and assessing of unknown prospects (L3_M).

L4: Providing Value for Money

The phrase value (product)-for-money (market) combines the two poles of the duality. It involves handling features of products that are believed to give value to customers, and seeing market potential in terms of sale price and payment conditions available in the market if customers look elsewhere.

This Level is Balanced: L4B.

L5: Bonding with Customers

To bond with customers means to recognize a dependency on them that is purely Market-centric, while focusing intense attention to customers that can only be sensibly developed around a particular product or service being offered i.e. Product-centric.

This Level has 2 polar Centres: L5_P & L5_M.

Dominance: Market-centric considerations dominate over Product-centric ones because awareness of dependency will focus efforts on retaining customers, a prime objective of a business. By contrast, the giving of attention is episodic and contingent on various factors, often extraneous or outside company control.

L6: Introducing Innovations

Innovation can mean new marketing categories (usually confusingly called «product categories») or even new markets. However, it may also be about new ideas or technological capabilities that will be devised or introduced to generate products whose marketing can be viewed as a separate issue.

This Level has 2 polar Centres: L6_P & L6_M.

Dominance: Innovations can focus either on the Market or on the Product. Market-centric considerations dominate over Product-centric ones because of the degree of uncertainty and distrust that new technology products generate.

L7: Anticipating the Market

Seeing potentials implies simultaneously envisaging the market type or niche emerging for a product and the type of possible product that might suit that market. So:

This Level is Balanced: L7B.

---

• Tension-3: Be clear about the inherent conflict between the Company and its Market.

Originally posted: July 2009