Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

CHAPTER 15 STRATEGIC ALLIANCES AND NETWORKS
15.3.4 Enhancing learning capabilities 
One reason for alliance may be to learn and acquire new capabilities. For example, as mentioned 
previously, consumer products giant Procter & Gamble has recently taken a shareholding in 
Internet retailer Ocado, seen as a testing ground for P&G to evaluate its ability to sell direct to the 
consumer and challenge the power of major ‘bricks-and-mortar’ retailers. Other P&G projects 
include swapping executives with Google to learn more about search behaviour and Internet 
use, in developing a new business model in the conventional value chain ( Piercy et al ., 2010b ). 
With the promise of biotechnology to provide new generations of drugs at a time when 
many pharmaceutical companies have clung to more traditional areas of R&D, big pharma 
companies such as Novartis and Merck are rapidly forming alliances with small biotechnol-
ogy companies to strengthen their position in the race to develop new cancer immunothera-
pies. This category is expected to be worth $40 billion a year within a decade, and the large 
companies cannot afford to miss out but must tap into the knowledge of others ( Ward, 2015 ). 
These developments cannot be ignored, as they provide powerful pressures towards 
collaboration between companies conventionally viewed as having only a buyer–seller 
relationship, or who were traditionally competitors. It is important that in evaluating our 
markets and our strategies for the future, we should carefully and systematically consider 
the emergence of these factors, which may drive our competitors’ and our own strategies 
into collaborative network forms. 
The next questions to consider relate to the types of networks that can be identified and 
the nature of the links that hold them together. As strategic alliances have become one of 
the most important organisational forms in modern business, managers are frequently faced 
with decision choices in terms of which type and form of alliance to adopt ( Pansiri, 2005 ).
15.4 
Network forms 
There is no broadly accepted typology of network organisational forms. However, the 
approach discussed here is useful in clarifying our ideas about the types of network that 
exist and may emerge in our markets. Cravens and Piercy (2012) report the integration of 
the perspectives offered by Achrol (1991) , Powell (1990) , Quinn (1992) and Webster (1992)
to propose the model of network organisation types shown in Figure 15.5 . They argue that 
there are different kinds of networks that can be classified in two important respects: 
1