Rethinking Strategy for Highly Dynamic Markets
For many businesses, the competitive landscape is dramatically changing due to convergence--a process by which the boundaries across industries or businesses or markets or geographies or customer experiences become blurred, resulting in new business opportunities to serve customer needs and improve customer value. To manage in a convergent economy, executives must understand the key drivers of a broader concept of convergence as well as how to detect and leverage convergence. By using a multidimensional framework with changing customer needs as the anchor, they can better position their firms or fine tune their strategies for the increasingly convergent economy. Fabio Ancarani, Michele Costabile, and Venkatesh Shankar.
Fabio Ancarani is Professor of Marketing at Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, and at SDA Bocconi School of Management (Milan), Michele Costabile is Professor of Marketing at
University of Calabria (Arcavacata Campus - Cosenza) and at SDA Bocconi School of Management
(Milan), and Venkatesh Shankar holds the Coleman Chair in Marketing at the Mays Business
School, Texas A&M University. The authors contributed equally to the article. They can be reached at
Fabio.ancarani@sdabocconi.it, Michele.costabile@sdabocconi.it, and VShankar@mays.tamu.edu, respectively. They thank Arianna Turconi and MariaChiara Gorlandi for their help in data collection.
Number of Exhibits] 5 graphics + 1 sidebars
Exhibit 1: Convergence of Food, Personal Care, Textile and Pharmaceutical Industries
Exhibit 2: Drivers of Convergence
Exhibit 3: A Model for Detecting and Leveraging Convergence
Exhibit 4: A Convergent Threat Assessment Grid
Exhibit 5: Leveraging Convergence through Customers
For many businesses, the competitive landscape is dramatically changing. Many firms are increasingly facing new and unconventional competitors from outside their traditional
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