Student Corner - 263

MARKETING AND COMPETITION

We discussed the importance of segmentation in marketing the products or services and we also discussed some types of segmentation, the last being behavioral segmentation. We ended our last session with reference to competition.  We will go rather deep in the subject of competition.

Competition has become the way of life whether you are in business or not.  From early childhood, completion is injected into the mind; in schools, in colleges, even in the universities. First Rank slogan is dinned into the ears. Success is so much worshipped that some students take to suicide because they did not score the marks their parents and their classmates expected them to get.  Almost all human efforts are directed to ‘More”; you want to be more intelligent; you want to be more charming; you want to be richer; this obsession with more is the backbone of competition. In business also you want to sell more products; you want to claim you have the largest number of customers; you want to be superstar in your walk of life.  You crave for social recognition; that is the reason for open or clandestine fight that is going on in almost all public walks of life. In politics, which is a great business today, it is said; service for the sake of service is of the past; today service demands some returns. Competition, in short, rules the world and Success is the only mantra people strive to achieve and the very glory attached to success is the final outcome of competition.

Competition creates rivalry and in business you want to sell more products than your rival so that you generate more revenue than him. You must be able to make more Profit than your rival no matter how rich you already are. Business being a very important part of society, social engagement, no wonder, competition is omnipresent like so called god. And one has to accept competition as it is without philosophizing.

In fact, competition has some real tangible merit also. If it is taken in right spirit, it induces you to use your talents in the best way possible. While competing with your rival, you focus on your strength which indirectly tells us you are aware of your weaknesses. What is called SWOT analysis helps us understand our strength and weaknesses. Actually the word stands for Strength Weakness Opportunity and Threat. If competition is understood in the right way and practised in the fair way your weakness is turned into your strength and threat you face provides you an opportunity to know it and win it. Here competition does you good and if your rival does not use this way of understanding SWOT, it is his mistake and you have not done anything harmful directly to him.

Using your strength actually increases your ability to use your innate talents in a far better way; that is, your efficiency is strengthened.  Competition thus enhances your efficiency; it means you can identify your strength and develop it as much as needed.

In the final analysis, society also benefits by competition. An individual gets better products for the same cost; that is the best benefit of competition. And your efficiency lies in detecting your customers’ need, their affordability, their buyer behaviour that is the frequency of their purchase, and if possible, the family members and their choices also. If you do not have that business efficiency, your company will find it very difficult to sustain and to survive.

Of course, your efficiency is reflected in the very administration of the enterprise, beginning from staffing. It is not enough you alone are efficient and your staff also must be efficient.

We will see how to find out the deficiencies in efficiency and how they are reflected in the company’s performance.