ABSTRACT
Michael Porter has taken this final ingredient of the macro marketing environment and researched the more micro elements of competition, recognizing that while micro forces – as with the broader macro forces – are beyond a business’s direct control, they have a more variable impact on separate
of its customers than to the others, and in times of short supply may safeguard the fortunes of its favoured customer. This applies also to the marketing intermediaries (cf. Brief 28) – such as dealers, distributors, agents, brokers, wholesalers, retailers – on whom most businesses depend for the delivery of their products to the consumer. Buyers, too, have a fickleness and variable loyalty to suppliers. Porter’s prime concern is the nature of competition. A new product launch by a major rival will impact to variable degrees on its competitors. Most businesses consider only like-for-like competitors (cf. Brief 34). It is important to watch out for new entrants coming into a market: Daewoo in the European car market or Dyson stealing leadership from Hoover in the vacuum cleaner wars. Substitute solutions to a customer’s problem should also be studied: micro-bore tunnelling moles negating the need for a JCB backhoe digging a trench.
