Defensive Marketing

Defensive Marketing

Introduction

A defensive marketing strategy is a marketing tool many companies use to protect their customers from competitors. Usually,  the company that implements the strategy is usually the leading competitor, when a new entrant into the market tries to challenge them by offering alternative products or services. These substitutes may either be lower-priced, or of higher quality to the product of the leading company, there are different types of defensive marketing, which include position defense, mobile defense, flanking defense, counter-offensive defense, and contraction defense.

Examples of defensive marketing

Position defense is the most common strategy whereby companies hold their current position by trying to build a stronger brand name and customer loyalty. The mobile defense is where companies introduce new products to the market or modifying the existing ones to ensure that the competitors are unable to compete with them at the same level. The flanking defense is when a company ventures into new markets, gains new customers, but loses others in the existing market. Counter-offensive is when the leading company retaliates by striking back with a new attack. The contraction defense is where a company retrieves from the attacked market and ventures into a different one when they find they can compete with the new competitors.one of the known companies to use defensive mechanism is Google company, which uses the mobile defense

Mobile defense strategy

The mobile defense strategy involves a company changing its position for competitors to compete with it. the company can either change its business position by introducing new products into the market,  updating the existing products, venturing into new markets, or reducing its prices.  Google is well known to change its business position just to make it hard for its competitors. Google is the leading company in cloud technology services. It evades competition by attacking itself. This means that it produces new products which cause the old products to become obsolete. This makes it hard for the competitors to catch up with Google, and they end up competing with its old products.

Google also has managed to stand out as the fastest browser platform of all ages. Maintaining relationships with Mozilla and its own Google chrome has ensured that the company remains the preferred browsing platform. Google uses pop-up adverts to increase its advertising business, which Facebook does not have. In most cases, when one opens an application, there is a chance of coming across a pop-up advertisement that is sponsored by Google. Google also developed google maps, which can be used in other applications such as WhatsApp to beat competition from bing maps from Microsoft. Google has also come up with many applications that satisfy the customer differently. They include a calendar software, cloud storage for both customers and businesses, spreadsheets, word processors to beat the competition out of Microsoft, and a web email to challenge yahoo.

Conclusion

The defensive strategy is an effective strategy that leading companies have used to maintain their customer base. Google has succeeded in staying in business due to 1998 due to the implementation of a defensive strategy. Google has had many competitors who have failed to beat it. They include Infoseek, all the web, cuil, and many others. the continuous updating of applications such as web emails, cloud storage for both business and customers has allowed the company to attract many customers.

References

Sitti, Rex. (2016). The Ins and Outs of Google Inc.; A Strategic Analysis. 10.13140/RG.2.1.3630.3129.

Karakaya, Fahri & Yannopoulos, Peter. (2010). Defensive strategy framework in global markets: A mental models approach. European Journal of Marketing – EUR J MARK. 44. 1077-1100. 10.1108/03090561011047535.

Bozkurt, Filiz & Ergen, Ahu. (2016). Art of War and Its Implications on Marketing Strategies: Thinking like a Warrior. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478). 3. 37. 10.20525/ijrbs.v3i3.108.