Commentary—Defensive Marketing Strategies

Abstract

For every new product and service entrant, there are usually many incumbents who must defend their positions in the market. Hence, defensive strategy is as least as critical as new-product strategy. Our 1983 article argued that defensive strategy critically depends on the distribution of buyer preferences and the position of the new entrant relative to the position of the incumbent in a multidimensional attribute space. Since the appearance of our 1983 article in Marketing Science, research in defensive strategy has progressed in both prescriptive and descriptive directions. Subsequent research on defensive strategy has also addressed empirical, methodological, theoretical, and substantive issues. Today, defensive strategy is more important than ever, with shorter new-product life cycles, persistent service innovation, remarkable technological change, global competition, and the invention of new channels of distributions.

Offensive versus defensive marketing: What is the optimal spending allocation?

“…They find that a defensive marketing strategy largely depends on the distribution of buyer preferences and the position of the new entrant relative to the position of the incumbent in a multidimensional attribute space. A few extensions to this model have been proposed (see Hauser and Shugan (2008) for a review). A defensive marketing strategy is defined in this research stream as the reaction of an incumbent brand to the launch of a new competitive brand.…”

Oft‐overlooked business wisdom highlighted from the youth‐soccer sidelines

“…Hauser and Shugan (1983) are credited with cementing the importance of defender marketing strategies and they assert that such strategies are “more important than ever” (Hauser and Shugan, 2008, p. 85). Effective defensive strategies serve to protect a company's core revenues and margins, strengthen a company's balance sheet, and they prepare a company to move into its offense (i.e., grow its revenues and margins) (Deans et al 2009).…”

Defending Mail Markets Against New Entrants: An Application of the Defender Model

“…Shugan (1987) concludes that "[their] model fits well and provides potentially useful information" (p. 14) and Hauser and Gaskin posit that "the defender model is an adequate representation of aggregate consumer response" (p. 347). Nevertheless, the success of each application highly depends on the choice of attributes (see Hauser and Shugan, 2008).…”