Strategic marketing planning

strategic marketing planning.

Some potential applications of SGA have been proposed in a number of

previous papers (e.g. Hatten and Hatten, 1987; Easton, 1988; Carroll et al., 1992;

Aaker, 1995; McGee et al., 1995). However, it should be noted that in the

majority of these papers the potential applications of SGA have only been

suggested from a theoretical point of view, without proposing a specific

methodology that allows us to put them into practice. Also, the most common

perspective of analysis employed has been strategic management instead of

strategic marketing. Finally, none of these papers have centred attention on the

various applications that SGA might have.

In the light of this, it seems appropriate to develop a paper in which the main

applications that can derive from SGA as a management tool for strategic

marketing are put in a synthesised and structured form, and with consideration

being given to the specific manner in which such applications could be

implemented.

SGA as a tool for strategic marketing

In this section, we introduce the concept of strategic group and present a short

review of the literature on the topic. We then propose six potential applications

of SGA as a strategic marketing tool.

The concept of strategic groups. The concept of strategic groups was coined

by Hunt (1972) to refer to highly symmetric firms operating within the same

industry with respect to some of their aspects such as cost structure, formal

organisation, degree of product differentiation and diversification, etc. The

strategic groups approach supposes that the strategic diversity of an industry

can be simplified by classifying the firms into different competitive groups

(Newman, 1978; Porter, 1979). Furthermore, it can be foreseen that these

groupings will remain stable due to the presence of mobility barriers, which

limit the movement of firms through strategic space (Caves and Porter, 1977),

or due to imperfections in the market for resources, which either make difficult

or delay the acquisition of the specific assets that are necessary for the

implementation of each strategy (Dierickx and Cool, 1989).

The concept of mobility barriers between groups is an extension of the entry

barriers to the industry. In particular, the theory of mobility barriers holds that

barriers impede not only the access of the newcomers from other industries, but

also the movement of firms between groups in the same industry. Additionally,

it is important to note that the mobility barriers may often be asymmetric

(Hatten and Hatten, 1987). This asymmetry is reflected in two ways. First,

entry into some groups would be more difficult than into others (it would

Strategic groups

analysis

551

depend

...