Manage for Profit Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets

How do companies in mature markets—where savings from cost-cutting have been exhausted and breakthrough innovations are hard to come by—achieve sustainable increases in profits? For decades, managers have been told the answer lies in pursuing high market share. The authors argue that this misguided advice has destroyed, rather than created, an additional profit potential, and they contend that companies can extract a profit potential of 1%-3 % of revenue by pursuing a profit, rather than a market share, orientation. Based on their extensive consulting work, the authors lay out a practical, proven program for making significantly more money by reconfiguring the marketing mix to sell existing products and services in different ways. The book offers practical strategies managers can use to differentiate mature products, raise prices effectively, time promotional activities properly, better understand consumer preferences, and more.