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Newsletter
The ‘Competitor Insight’ Issue
In This Issue
June - 2010 - Volume 1.2
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Editors' Note

Greetings!

We are pleased to share this second in a series of monthly newsletters from MarketCulture Strategies. Our goal with each letter is to provide value and insight that you can use to make your organization/group more market-driven. Each letter will have its own unique theme of what it means to be market-driven, where you’ll find:

  • A summary and translation of new research in the field for your immediate application

  • Best practices in market-driven organizations, conveyed directly from employees in the field

  • Our recent publications, free of charge

  • News and notes on what’s coming up at MCS and how you can participate

Another goal is to make this newsletter interactive, so we will want to hear your thoughts about what you read here. You’ll see links to connect with us throughout... do it! We look forward to sharing with you more of this journey into what drives firm performance and hearing from you along the way.

Sincerely,
Dr. Linden Brown
Lucas Coffeen


Dr. Linden Brown
Chairman and Chief Customer Officer

Lucas Coffeen
Business Analyst & Editor
 
The Competitor Insight Section

Competitor Insight & Your Bottom-Line

Focusing on competitors (understanding them, seeking to create advantages over them and minimizing their advantages over you) is key to firm performance. But the question should be raised, if Customer Insight is so important, as laid out in the last newsletter, and you’re doing your best to satisfy customer needs, why bother with competitors?
Click to find out

The Word From New Research

How to Use the Weapons You’ve Got

Inertia is often an unhealthy byproduct of organizational success. A natural tendency is to persist with ‘what got us here’ and insulate from change/action. However, market leaders are often dethroned because they become too passive toward competitor actions (Ferrier et al., 1999). In a new study, Debruyne, Frambach, and Moenart (2010) determine the cause of competitive lethargy in successful companies and identify a method for reversing it.
Click to access

How Focused Should You be on the Competition?

Countless studies have confirmed that Competitor Insight (your attention and responsiveness to competitors) improves firm performance. But your time and resources are limited; how much should you be focused on your competitors? A study by Olsen, Slater, and Hult (2005) finds that it depends on your firm’s strategy type.
Click here to see how focused you should be on the competition

The Word From The Field

What does Competitor Insight look like in the field? Looking for some ideas? The word from the field segment shares best practices in market-driven groups, across varied functions and industries. The verbatim quotes come directly from employees working in the field.   
Click to access

The Word From You

What does Competitor Insight look like in your work group? Here we pose several questions to get you thinking, get you moving, and get you involved in the discussion.
Please provide us your input

 
Recent Publications
Working With Blue Shield

MCS developed an innovative and effective marketing excellence program that targeted critical marketing capabilities required to drive business results. “I wanted to elevate Marketing to strategic partner status inside the business as a crucial element to driving growth.” - Doug Biehn, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Blue Shield.
Click to download.

Working with Speedo

Speedo was a strong brand, but manufacturing-oriented rather than market-focused. The MarketCulture team worked closely with the marketing director and his marketing team, and a broad section of the executive team to create the mindset and skills needed to turn the company around. Results included growth in market share, profit margins and the development of new market segments.
Click to download.

MarketCulture Blog The Market-Driven Blog

Latest Story: To improve customer experience take a look inside your corporate culture - There is a increasing recognition of the fact that a customer’s experience with your company plays a significant role in customer satisfaction, retention and profitability..

Read More

 
News & Notes

Upcoming Speaking

  • 06.25-26, 2010 - Executive Education Seminar, N.C. State University, Center for Innovation Management Studies (CIMS).

    2010 Bioscience Executive Series: This is the final two days of a six-day executive education series for bioscience executives. Titled "Innovation Deployment," this module reveals how culture drives or limits innovation and helps participants create a plan for transforming their organization's culture. MarketCulture's Sean M. Gallagher is a co-presenter of this module. Program Registration Has Closed


  • AMA: Strategic ROMI - The Keys to Successful Marketing Leadership in an Uneven Economy, New York, NY, Oct 7th, 2010 NYC.

    AMA’ Strategic ROMI Spotlight Forum brings strategy and practicality together. Our expert facilitators will go beyond just providing you with actionable tools for developing and executing a solid ROMI model - Click for more information

Past Speaking

  • 06.01, 2010 - WEBINAR - How to be Market-Driven: There's an App for That!
    Learn how to measure and benchmark your team and company culture on the 7 critical market-driven behaviors proven to drive business performance.


  • 05.28, 2010 - Guest Speaking - Carnegie Mellon University Enterprise Architecture Certification Program, Denmark.
    At this certification course, MarketCulture's Hjalte Hojsgaard, Engagement Manager, was invited to speak about how "market-driven" can be wired into the business through Enterprise Architecture. It's a talk about back-to-basics values and the expansion of Enterprise Architecture to encompass organizational culture and employee behaviors alongside processes, systems, and Information Technology.


  • 05.25, 2010 - WEBINAR - How to be Market-Driven: There's an App for That!
    Learn how to measure and benchmark your team and company culture on the 7 critical market-driven behaviors proven to drive business performance.

Partnership

We are looking for partners interested in using the MRI with their clients.
For more information contact us at [email protected]

 

Copyright � 2010 MarketCulture Strategies, Inc. All rights reserved

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P.S. You are receiving this e-mail because you have either worked with Dr Linden Brown, Sean Gallagher or Chris Brown, subscribed to our newsletter or met through networking events. If you do not wish to receive this Newsletter, feel free to unsubscribe below..

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