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OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES
market (or niche) attractiveness and current or potential strength of the company in serving
that market.
For the nicher, the second of these two considerations is often
more important than the
first. The major automobile manufacturers, for example, have concentrated their atten-
tions on the large-scale segments of the car market in attempts to keep costs down, through
volume production of standardised parts and components and
assembly-line economies of
scale.
This has left many smaller, customised segments of the market open to nichers where the
major manufacturers are not prepared to compete. In terms
of the overall car market, these
segments (such as for small sports cars) would be rated as relatively unattractive, but to a
small
operator such as Morgan Cars, with modest growth and return objectives, they offer
an ideal niche where its skills can be exploited to the full.
The Morgan order book is full,
there is a high level of job security and a high degree of job satisfaction in manufacturing a
high-quality, hand-crafted car.
Focusing effort
The essence of the niche strategy is to focus activity on the selected targets and not allow
the company blindly to pursue any potential customer. Pursuing
a niche strategy requires
discipline to concentrate effort on the selected targets.
Hammermesh
et al. (1978) examined a number of companies that had successfully
adopted a niche strategy and concluded that they showed three main characteristics:
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