Marketing warfare

COMPETITION IN INDIAN INDUSTRIES - A strategic perspective: N. Ravichandran - Editor; Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., - 576, Masjid Road, Jangpura, New Delhi-110014. Rs. 450.

ANY COMMERCIAL organisation can succeed only if it is financially viable and also profitable. And profits flow from the market; from the customers. Marketing is the process of ensuring that sufficient customers conduct business with an organisation and come back for more, which alone will ensure its continuous profitability.

Marketing would be easy, if we were able to do it in isolation. If our company was the only one in the field, the world of customers would beat a path to our door. But there is always a multitude of external influences, all of which conspire and collude to make things more difficult for us. And competition is the most conspicuous among these factors.

What exactly is competition? If we make, say, fountain pens: then, other fountain pen makers constitute our competition. Not only that. What else do we write with? Companies making ball pens, fibre tip pens, pencils - all these are our competition. And what about typewriters and word processors? What about dictating machines? When we consider the possibility, and often the reality, of fountain pens being used for gifts and giveaways, we are in competition with a very large volume of consumer goods.

Competition is the cornerstone for customer delight. It is the guarantee and passport for excellence in manufacture. It is the insignia and lapel pin, announcing quality and reliability of the goods and services which we buy. Few businesses enjoy a monopoly. What is more, competition does not go about its way by carefully avoiding us, or steering clear of us. Competition is there to get at us, to grab us, and clean destroy us.

Their marketing efforts are designed to sell their products, and push our products into wilderness. Marketing is warfare, and competition deploys an ever changing armoury of weapons to secure an edge. We need to keep our eyes and ears open, always and everytime, even to survive, leave alone succeed.

The book under notice comprises the project work component in the syllabus for the post-graduate course of study, in the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, during the academic year, 1997-1998. The subject of the project work was ``Strategy formulation and implementation'' in the Indian business scenario. The volume has been edited by the professor in charge of the curricular administration. He states in the preface with legitimate pride: ``When my students made their final project presentations, I was impressed with the quality and coverage of the report. We decided to edit the project reports and bring them out as a separate volume for wider use by academic and practising community in India and other neighbouring countries.''

The book has been divided into six sections, or modules, as the editor prefers to call them. The first module, consisting of two chapters, provides the background to the book, and introduces the reader to the central theme of the tome. The first chapter (written by the professor himself) deals with the theory and maxim of industry analysis and competitive strategy. Much of what is discussed in this chapter is inspired by Michael Porter's work on the subject. The writer has dealt with Porter's ``Five forces model'' with specific reference to India. The second chapter in this module, again, is a thematic presentation dealing with India's economic reforms of the 1990s, and their relevance to the development of industries. It is at once an authentic and comprehensive exposition of what has actually taken place, written by a former Finance Secretary to the Central Government.

The subsequent four modules contain 11 papers, each dealing with an industry, individually and separately, prepared by a student as part of his project work. These industries have been categorised as matured industries (module two), high growth industries (module four), declining industries (module five), and industries of the future (module three). The last module is entitled, ``Dynamics of corporate strategy''. It is an illustrative case history of the Eicher-Enfield amalgamation, written by the professor, again, with a penchant for analytical presentation of the evolution, consolidation, decline, and recovery phases of the Royal Enfield Motors at Madras.

Banking, steel and automobile industries are the subject of study under the matured industries category. Tyres, paints, detergents and pharmaceuticals constitute the high growth industries covered in India. The cigarette industry is analysed under the classification of declining industries. Cellular phone, financial services and software comprise the sunrise industries in India.

Each paper vies with the other in terms of depth of exposition, extent of research, and a clear focus on the issues pertinent to conducting an industry analysis, in order to formulate a competitive strategy. No wonder the professor took up the cudgels to publish them in book form. In fact, the target audience for this volume will extend from the student fraternity, required to prepare project work as part of their curricular pursuit to the faculty teaching strategy management in academic institutions; and to managers wanting to gain an introduction into this subject.

R. DEVARAJAN

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