Common ‘GROWTH STRATEGIES’ every strategist should know.

·       Red ocean strategy - Competing in existing markets where you try and beat the competition in a fight for the existing customer demand.

·       Blue ocean strategy - Create uncontested market spaces making the competition irrelevant as you create and capture new demand.

·       Beachhead strategy - Strategies and tactics used to gain traction or a sustainable position in a new market.

·       Ambush marketing - Advertisers work to connect their product with a particular event in the minds of potential customers, without having to pay for the event.

·       Guerrilla marketing - The use of small incremental attacks by using unconventional methods against a larger opposition.

·       Mobile defence - By moving resources and creating new strategies and tactics the intended goal is to create a moving target that is difficult to attack by the opposition.

·       Frontal attack: Specifically designed to engage the opposition with a head on frontal assault.

·       Encirclement strategy: To find niches in the marketing space rather than compete against the competition, more of an indirect assault on the opposition’s market share.

·       Leapfrog strategy: Achieved through technological advancements or creating new segments that have not been developed as of yet.

What is IKEA’s Success Mantra ?

• ·       Everyone needs furniture and IKEA found a way to produce this stuff in a way that's affordable to customers and can be scaled globally.
• ·       Flat pack furniture ships with great efficiency and its cost to produce relative to real wood is much lower.
• ·       The trade-off, is that the customer must assemble it somehow, which they enjoy. And people trade convenience for affordability all the time.
• ·       They're also combining affordability with pleasing design. Cheap and nice is rare and this creates excitement and enthusiasm, which drives sales.

• ·       Their ads are unconventional, they frequently feature people from LGBTQ community and it appeals to them.
• ·       IKEA is an elaborate combination of shell corporations, non-profits, licensees, licensors and other clever dodges to escape taxations.
• ·       Except for little things like foodstuffs, they design the products, manufacture most of them, handle distribution and do the retail, a classic example of vertical integration.
• ·       They keep the bulk of their margins, and don’t split the pie with different brands or distributors, like other distributors and retailers.

How “Asian Paints” Challenges the Conventional Thinking

• Formed by four friends in 1942, has a history longer than Modern India.

• By the start of new millennium, the Indian public had changed with more money and less time.

• Customers might think little about paint but they placed a high value on the effect paint brought to their homes.

• Ads with the tagline ‘Har ghar kuch kehta hai’ signified the change.

• A new helpline was launched which brought the public closer to the brand.

• Introduction of a ‘Home Solutions’ service completed the company’s move to a premium brand.

• Buyers of Asian Paints’ premium products swap money for solutions, not just paint.

• Asian Paints raised staff salaries and is going ahead with annual increments to boost their morale amid the coronavirus pandemic.

• There has been no layoff and share prices of Asian Paints gained over 2% to ₹1,554 on May 15 after the announcement despite the poor performance of market in general.