MARKETING BOOK: Strategic Market Management


	Strategic Market Management: Fifth Edition
	By David A. Aaker
	New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998 ISBN 0-471-17743-1 (pbk.) Order from Amazon Books If you order from Amazon through this site, a percentage of the sale will be given to the marketing group to support academic research.

The development, evaluation and implementation of business strategies are essential to successful management.

The key is a management system that will help managers

Provide vision to their businesses.
Monitor and understand a dynamic environment.
Generate strategic options that will be responsive to changes facing a business.
Develop strategies based on sustainable competive advantages.

This book has four key thrusts. The first is a structure and methodology for analyzing the external environment. Strategic planning that represents an automatic extension of what was done last year and that is dominated by financial objectives and spreadsheets will be inadequate and may even inhibit or prevent strategic change and innovation. Rather, strategy development should look outside the business to sense changes, trends, threats, and opportunities and then create strategies that are responsive. This book describes and illustrates a structured approach to external analysis that business managers should find helpful in generating strategic options. This approach is supported by a summary flow diagram, a set of agendas to help start the process, and a set of planning forms.

The second thrust is toward sustainable competitive advantages (SCAs). Having SCAs is crucial to long-term success. Without them a business will be treading water if it survives at all. SCAs need to be based on organizational assets and skills. Thus the book presents methods and concepts that will help readers to select relevant assets and skills and to develop strategies in branding, advertising, distribution, manufacturing, and finance to exploit them.

The third thrust involves the investment decision. The need is to select investment or disinvestment levels for existing product-market business areas and to chart growth directions. Among the alternative growth directions are market penetration, product expansion, market expansion, diversification, and vertical integration. By using a variety of concepts and methods such as strategic questions, portfolio models, and scenario analysis, this book will help managers identify and evaluate numerous strategic investment alternatives.

A fourth thrust is implementation. It is important to understand how an organization's structure, systems, people, and culture contribute to strategic success. In addition, how can an organization create dynamic strategies that are responsive to changing conditions? How can alliances be used to gain strategic advantage? What are the implementation issues when markets are mature or declining or when competition is global in scope?

Last updated on March 7, 2004