Marketing Warfare

MARKETING WARFARE
By Paul Herbig, Managing Director HMA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Marketing warfare is a term used to describe some of the techniques and tactics marketeers use in their everyday language. There are two types of force a business can use against it's competition. The first is offensive attack and the second is defensive attack.
Frontal attack, Flanking, Encirclement, Bypassand Guerilla warfare are some examples of an offensive marketing warfare strategy. When using the offensive strategy it is important to remember three important principles: 1. The main consideration is the strength of the leader's position. 2. Find a weakness in the leader's strength and attack at that point. 3. Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible (Ries, 1986).
Defensivemarketing warfare involves employing those tactics and strategies to maintain the market share a company has already achieved. There are three important guidelines to remember in defensive marketing warfare: 1. Only the market leader should consider playing defense. 2. The best defensive strategy is the courage to attack yourself. 3. Strong competitive moves should always be blocked (Ries,1986).
Some examples of current marketing warfare can be seen in the cola, beer and burger wars. Through observing these market segments, a marketer can see marketing warfare in action.
All in all, marketing warfare is something each marketer will experience in his marketing career. In order to be a successful marketer it is important to have a complete understanding how to win the marketingwar.

MARKETING WARFARE
INTRODUCTION
Marketing Warfare is a term used to describe some of the techniques and tactics marketers use in their everyday language. First, there are two types of force a business can use against it's competition. The first is offensive attack and the second is defensive attack. Before a person can understand the concept of marketing warfare they must understandthe terms which are associated with this type of marketing strategy.
The ideas behind attack and defend are two very different ideas. Attack basically means to seek more than one has, moreover to take what someone else possesses (Kotler, 1981). Defense means to protect what one has already acquired.

OFFENSIVE MARKETING WARFARE
Frontal attack, Flanking, Encirclement, Bypass and Guerillawarfare are some examples of offensive strategy. When using the offensive strategy in marketing warfare, Al Ries and Jack Trout suggest three offensive principles which include: 1. The main consideration is the strength of the leaders's position. 2. Find a weakness in the leader's strength and attack at that point. 3. Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible (Ries, 1986).
FRONTALATTACK
Frontal attack occurs when a company takes all of their forces and faces them directly opposite of the opponent (Kotler, 1981). In order to be successful with this type of an attack, statistics show that a factor of five to one is needed for a successful frontal attack (Kotler 1981). For example, in the 1970's three electronic giants tried to attack IBM head on against their strongholdon the mainframe computer market (Kotler, 1981). Each electronic corporation failed because they used a pure frontal attack against IBM's massive stronghold.
There are many types of frontal attacks including: a pure frontal attack, a limited frontal attack, price based frontal attack, and research and development based frontal attack (Kotler, 1985). A pure frontal attack involves matchinga competitors product in all areas of marketing (Kotler, 1985). The product is matched price versus price, promotion versus promotion, characteristic versus characteristic and so on. Basically, a pure frontal attack is taking a "look alike" or "me too" strategy (Kotler, 1985). When using a pure frontal attack, companies should be prepared to expend large sums of money.
The next type of...