Marketing is becoming a battle based on information than on sales power.
Poor firms ignore their competitors; average firms copy their competitors; winning firms lead their competitors.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the different approaches firms take regarding competition, highlighting that true success comes from leadership rather than imitation or ignorance.
Philip Kotler's quote illustrates the varying strategies that firms employ in relation to their competitors. Poor firms tend to overlook their competition, which can lead to missed opportunities and a lack of innovation. Average firms may simply imitate what their competitors are doing, which can result in a stagnant market where no one stands out. In contrast, winning firms take the initiative to lead and innovate, setting the standards for others to follow. This leadership not only distinguishes them in the marketplace but also drives progress and evolution within the industry.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a business seminar, a speaker highlighted the importance of leadership in competition and quoted Philip Kotler.
More from Philip Kotler
All quotes βThe art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you arenot a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.
Marketing is a race without a finishing line
The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.
Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something. They should worry more about the cost of not doing it.
Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.
Similar quotes
The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from '87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.
Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself
Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariable does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.
Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.
The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.