Is marketing the source of "Blue Ocean" strategies?

Introduction

In the competitive world of business, any organization has to evolve different strategies to strive hard to achieve its goal and be there in the competition. Organizations identify, plan and manufacture products and provide services, so that it doesn’t face stiff competition from its rivals but makes its rivals compete with it. In order to make this possible, company need to market its products and services through the best mediums available and make the consumer conscious about the product. Marketing is an essential and important tool of any successful business. Scott (2006)^[1] states that companies without marketing mindset are at a disadvantage in today’s business world that are product centric rather than customer centered.

The overall concept of Blue Ocean Strategy is innovation. It is understood from the book that companies should identify, plan a strategy and create a business of which no competition exists. Kim and Renee (2005)^[2] divide the competitive business world into two segments of Red Ocean and Blue Ocean. It is further explained that ‘Red Ocean’ is the business world full of competition where the existing organizations compete with each other to acquire its share in the market whereas ‘Blue Ocean’ is the unidentified market area. The Blue Ocean is the space wherein the business is new in the market and has no threat of competition instead it has to create competition.

The giants of particular commodity or product or services, who are termed as leader, find it difficult to survive in the competitive world of business without marketing. American Marketing Association has defined marketing as the performance of the business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer or user. Marketing assists in identifying specific markets for products and services, guiding the development of products, packages, and services, etc. (Kumar)^[3]

In blue ocean strategy this concept has a new meaning and a new method to implement in the firms. Blue ocean marketing concept proposes a method based on the segmented target group and the product development and marketing is based on the conduct of this group. The concept is good but cannot be fitted with all firms and their marketing procedures as it lack competition, which is vital in the marketing concept. (Kim and Renee, 2005)^[4]

Marketing Strategy

David (2007)^[5] states that creating a marketing strategy is only the first step towards the attainment of goal and after the strategy has been built; its solidarity has to be maintained to attract external stakeholders. He criticizes the marketing directors who are using B2B model while the others in the market have adopted real and valuable marketing strategies.

The first principle of blue ocean strategy is to reconstruct market boundaries to create blue oceans so that it doesn’t face any level of competitions and existence of competitors is zero. In order to create Blue Ocean, it becomes necessary to identify the threats and difficulties that make Red Ocean such a difficult world to live in. The red ocean companies are trapped in this area due to following reasons, 1) they define their industry similar to which exists in the market and try to provide the best other than others, 2) they try to and follow the strategic accepted methods, models, principles of developed and successful companies and strive to stand out in their strategic group, 3) as they produce similar products and provide service similar to that of the other industry, they focus the same consumer, which further makes the competition stiff and harder, 4) they define the scope of products and services similarly, 5) they accept the rules and regulations of the specific industry as they are governed by the governing body and functions accordingly and 6) some seasonal products produced by the companies will face stiff competition from its rivals as all the companies will enter the market at same time. (Kim and Renee, 2005)^[6]

Market for some product is such wide that no single provider or manufacturer can cater the demand of the entire volume of consumer in this broad global market place. In that specific scenario, blue ocean strategy cannot be fit with the regular marketing strategies. Marketing can produce blue ocean strategy but cannot fit it with all products. Hence, blue ocean strategy can be implemented in the marketing of some products. Marketing cannot easily generate blue ocean strategy as the chance for it is so less and there may be a good chance of finding a competitor with ‘me too’ product.

Innovation

The key element of blue ocean strategy is value innovation, a combination of differentiation and low cost that sets a product line or service apart from its competitors. Innovation is the buzz word in each and every industry and organization. The business world and political world has realized the importance of word ‘innovation’ which brings the new products or services in line by the enterprises or government agencies. Blue Ocean can be created in two ways, one be launching entirely new business different from others, market for which does not exist and eventually no market means no competitors and second, by creating it within the red ocean by expanding the boundaries of existing industry as in mobile industry. When cell phones first arrived, it was only the medium of voice based service, but SMS came into foray, them MMS, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, and many more services are being added to this little piece to increase its sales via comprehensive marketing. (www.12manage.com)^[7] Lauren Mathys states that Blue Ocean Strategy is about creating new direction for a company that may already be one of the very good ones but wishes to be the best. (Dag, Swimming the Blue Ocean)^[8]

The essence of marketing concept is that customer and not the pro­duct shall be the centre or the heart of the entire business system. In Blue Ocean strategy this is true – customer is targeted first and the product or service is introduced for this segmented group of customer It em­phasizes customer-oriented marketing process. But in the expansion process of the targeted group, there will be so many unexpected barriers due to lack of existing marketing data and experience. This may sometimes poses as a big treat for the development and this can be eliminated with traditional marketing strategies along with modern strategies.

All business operations revolve around customer satisfaction and service. Marketing plans, policies and programmes are formulated to serve efficiently customer de­mand. Marketing research and marketing information service is expected to provide adequate, accurate and latest information regarding target markets and current consumer wants as well as dealer wants to the marketing managers and on the basis of such realistic information, they will take sound decision on any marketing problem. The entire marketing mix will be formulated on the basis of marketing research. Thus, marketing strategy is a plan of action for obtaining the marketing objectives.

The marketing objectives gave a picture where it wants to go and the marketing strategy provides the path to reach there. In other words, marketing strategy is a specific plan for allocating marketing resources to reach marketing objectives. Hence, which strategy is adopted depends on the objectives of the firm and marketing recourses, which it has. Sometimes it is easy to conquer the competition with the advantage but sometime, it is easy to find a new market place. Hence, there is no readymade strategies are available and it can be not be created from vacuum. Find a product or service and adopt the apt method to market it is the real strategy behind the success of a firm. From the business point of view, strategy may be defined as the schemes whereby a firm's resources and advantages are managed in order to surprise and surpass competitors or to exploit opportunities. In this very concept the very concepts in the Blue ocean strategy has a very little meaning in the overall marketing strategy formulation process.^[9] (Kim and Renee, 2005)

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^[1] Scott F. Geld (2006) Importance of Marketing, Marketingblaster, http://tools.devshed.com/c/a/Website-Marketing/Importance-of-Marketing/

^[2] W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

^[3] Kumar, N. Marketing Management, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd.

^[4] W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

^[5] David Murphy (2007) The Marketer, March 2007

^[6] W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

^[7] Blue Ocean Strategy (2009) 12 Manage, http://www.12manage.com/methods_kim_blue_ocean_strategy.html

^[8] Dag Hakon Helevik, Swimming the Blue Ocean, http://www.norskdesign.no/getfile.php/Filer/Artikler/Ukeavisen%20Ledelse_EN.pdf.

^[9] W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts