There are four types of market location tactics: market leaders, market challengers, market followers, and market nichers. Market leaders have the largest market share and influence industry developments. They retain their position by expanding the market, defending their share, and enhancing effectiveness. Market challengers aim to challenge or follow the leader by setting objectives, choosing attack strategies like frontal or flank attacks, and usually aiming to increase their share. Market followers imitate leaders without disrupting the industry, using strategies like cloning or adapting. Market nichers carve out a small, unique niche by excelling in attributes, locations, or customization.

1. MARKET LOCATION TACTICS
On the basis of the role that organizations play in the target
market, market location tactics could be of four types.
They are:
I. Market Leader,
II. Market Challenger,
III. Market Follower and
IV. Market Nichers.

2. 1. Market Leaders:
Market leaders are organizations that have the largest market
share in the relevant product market and usually lead the industry
in factors such as technological developments, product and
service attributes, price benchmarks or distribution channel
design.
In order to take up the market leader position and to retain it,
Kolter proposes these three strategies.
i. Expanding the total market through new users, new uses and
more usage.

3. Market Leaders: Cont…
ii. Defending the market share through position defense, flank
defense, counteroffensive defense, mobile defense and
contraction defense.
iii. Expanding the market share through enhancement of
operational effectiveness by means such as new product
development, raising manufacturing efficiency, improving
product quality, providing superior support services or increasing
marketing expenditure.

4. 2. Market Challengers:
• Market challengers are organizations that have the second or
lower ranking in the industry.
• These organizations can either challenge the market leader or
choose to follow them..
•The tactics adopted by the market challenger have several
components. First, the challenger has to define the objectives and
the opponents, choose a general attack strategy and then, choose
a specific attack strategy.
•The most common objective of the challenger is increasing the
market share.

5. Market Challengers: Cont…
A general attack approach could be of five types:
•Frontal attack involving matching the opponent in terms of the
product, price, promotion and distribution.
•Flank attack involving challenging the opponent’s weak or
uncovered geographical or segmental areas.
•Enrichment attack involving a grand move to capture the
opponent’s market share through means such as making an
unbeatable product-related offering or presenting a unique
service guarantee.

6. Market Challengers: Cont…
•Bypass attack involving ignoring the opponent and attacking the
easier markets by means such as diversifying into unrelated
products, moving into new geographical areas or leapfrogging
into new technologies.
•Guerrilla attack involving small, intermittent attacks to harass
and demoralize the opponent organization and eventually secure
an organizational foothold in the industry. This could be done by
means such as price cuts, price discounts, intensive comparative
advertising or initiating legal action.

7. 3. Market followers:
• Market followers are organizations that imitate the market
leaders but do not upset the balance of competitive power in the
industry.
• They prefer to avoid direct attack, keep out of the way of other
organizations and reap the benefits of the innovations made by
the market leaders through imitation.
The market follower may adopt four broad approaches as under:
i. Counterfeiter strategy involving duplicating the market
leader’s product and packaging and selling it in the black market.

8. ii. Cloner strategy involving emulating the market leader’s
products, name and packaging.
iii. Imitator strategy involving copying some things from the
market leader while retaining some other features such as
pricing, packaging, or advertising.
iv. Adapter strategy involving adapting one’s own products to
those of the market leader and selling them in different markets.
Market followers: Cont…

9. 4. Market Nichers:
•Market niches are organizations that carve out a distinct niche
that is left uncovered by the other organizations in the industry or
a niche that is of little or no interest to others.
•The niche strategies are akin to focus business strategies as they
target a market position that is small and unique and require
special competencies in order to be served.
•There are several means through which specialization for
serving a niche market can be developed. Excelling in providing
a special product or service attribute, serving a district
geographical area or offering a customized product or service to
a select group of customers are some such means.

10. Market Nichers: Cont…
Market niches can adopt three approaches, which are as under:
•Creating niches, involving looking for ways and means by
which niches can be identified or created in an industry.
•Expanding niches, involving enhancing the coverage of present
niche to include similar market niches or new niches.
•Protecting niches, involving shielding the niches served from
attacks by other organizations in the industry.

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