As part of my thesis on Strategic Marketing at MGSM, I worked on an interesting assignment in a syndicate group ( group of executive students who work together to complete the report jointly).
I am writing about it because this is the second assignment after last year’s marketing project on Tata Nano’s launch in Australia that I really enjoyed doing.
The assignment was an industry study in which we chose search advertising industry and covered application of strategic marketing frameworks to identify an effective and appropriate competitive position for Google AdWords - our focal product.
So, what is special about building a marketing strategy for Google AdWords which is cruising along at market dominating share and hasn’t allowed anyone to challenge it since 2001?
Well, to start with, Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo’s search infrastructure gives Microsoft a fighting chance after a long time in its struggle to gain a foothold in the lucrative search market. Luckily, the development took place close to our assignment dates to allow us include its impact on a possible Google strategy.
Secondly, the focal product is placed in such a highly competitive playground that it is prone to a transformational change or a radical competitive action that may make it irrelevant, just as Google itself made AltaVista and GoTo irrelevant in search back in the years 2000-2001.
We worked on a market, customer, competitive, environmental and internal analysis and followed it up with a prognosis for the industry and for the focal product. This was followed by defining the problem for the focal product, alternative strategic positions, analysis of these alternatives especially using a fit and attractiveness analysis, selecting and recommending a strategic positioning and designing an action plan to imeplement the selected strategy.
If you’d like to know more about it or have a copy of the report (completely based on publicly available research), feel free do contact me.
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