Four Focus Strategies
Four Focus Strategies
It's not usually realistic for a firm to try to appeal to all actual or potential buyers in a market, because customers are too numerous, too widely scattered, and too varied in their needs, purchasing behavior, and consumption patterns. Firms themselves vary widely in their abilities to serve different types of customers. So rather than attempting to compete in an entire market, each company needs to focus its efforts on those customers it can serve best.
In marketing terms, focus means providing a relatively narrow product mix for a particular market segment a group of customers who share common characteristics, needs, purchasing behavior, or consumption patterns. Successful implementation of this concept requires firms to identify the strategically important elements in their service operations and concentrate their resources on these factors.
The extent of a company's focus can be described on two different dimensions market focus and service focus. Market focus is the extent to which a firm serves few or many markets, while service focus describes the extent to which a firm offers few or many services. These dimensions define the four basic focus strategies shown in Figure.
A fully focused organization provides a very limited range of services (perhaps just a single core product) to a narrow and specific market segment. For example, Aspen Travel serves the specific needs of the film production industry. A market-focused company concentrates on a narrow market segment but has a wide range of services. Each Travel fest store serves a limited geographic market; appealing to families and individuals planning vacation trips rather than to business travelers, but offers a broad array of services.
Service-focused firms offer a narrow range of services to a fairly broad market. Thus, Capital Prestige Travel specializes in the narrow field of discount cruise sailings, but reaches customers across a broad geographic market through a telephone-based
It's not usually realistic for a firm to try to appeal to all actual or potential buyers in a market, because customers are too numerous, too widely scattered, and too varied in their needs, purchasing behavior, and consumption patterns. Firms themselves vary widely in their abilities to serve different types of customers. So rather than attempting to compete in an entire market, each company needs to focus its efforts on those customers it can serve best.
In marketing terms, focus means providing a relatively narrow product mix for a particular market segment a group of customers who share common characteristics, needs, purchasing behavior, or consumption patterns. Successful implementation of this concept requires firms to identify the strategically important elements in their service operations and concentrate their resources on these factors.
The extent of a company's focus can be described on two different dimensions market focus and service focus. Market focus is the extent to which a firm serves few or many markets, while service focus describes the extent to which a firm offers few or many services. These dimensions define the four basic focus strategies shown in Figure.
A fully focused organization provides a very limited range of services (perhaps just a single core product) to a narrow and specific market segment. For example, Aspen Travel serves the specific needs of the film production industry. A market-focused company concentrates on a narrow market segment but has a wide range of services. Each Travel fest store serves a limited geographic market; appealing to families and individuals planning vacation trips rather than to business travelers, but offers a broad array of services.
Service-focused firms offer a narrow range of services to a fairly broad market. Thus, Capital Prestige Travel specializes in the narrow field of discount cruise sailings, but reaches customers across a broad geographic market through a telephone-based