Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Supplier network
At the other end of the supply chain, well-developed or unique links with key suppliers 
can be important marketing assets. These can help to secure continuity of supply of raw or 
semi-finished materials at required standards for negotiated prices.
6.4.3 Internal marketing support assets
A resource becomes an asset when actively used to improve the organisational performance 
in the marketplace. Consider the following examples.

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CHAPTER 6 UNDERSTANDING THE ORGANISATIONAL RESOURCE BASE
Cost advantages
A competitive cost advantage brought about by employing up-to-date technology, better 
capacity utilisation, economies of scale, or experience curve effects, can translate into lower 
prices for products and services in the marketplace. Where the market is price-sensitive, for 
example, with commodity items a lower price can be a major asset. In other markets where 
price is less important, cost advantages may not translate into marketing assets, but may be 
used to provide better margins.
Information systems and market intelligence
Information systems and systematic marketing research can be valuable assets in that they 
keep the company informed about customers and competitors. Information is a major asset 
that many firms guard jealously, but until it is utilised to make better decisions, it not a 
marketing asset as such. This is an important point, as many organisations collect huge 
amounts of data, but do not utilise them effectively (or at all), which is largely a waste of 
time, coupled with the additional problem of missing emerging competitive trends.
When used well, data can be utilised to create a closer bond between corporation and 
customer. Customer experiences can be tailored to give the impression that an individual 
customer is ‘known’ and valued by a particular company. We all have examples of this, 
and you may well be thinking of one right now, but the underlying idea is the same (for 
example, Virgin Atlantic ‘knows’ which newspapers and seats frequent fliers prefer, and 
Amazon always seems to ‘know’ the kinds of things you are looking for when you log on).
As well as understanding customers better than competitors do, the owners of data 
warehouses can create marketing strategies that exploit this resource as a differentiating 
capability; they simply know customers and their markets ‘better’ than competitors. Of 
course, they still have to do something with this knowledge, and one of the key challenges 
for data-rich organisations is how well (or possibly how quickly) ideas developed through 
insights provided by data are converted into actions.