###The Nature of Competition###

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The golfing world is bracing for the return of Tiger Woods at the Masters this week (in case you missed it, he had an unfortunate incident spellbinding his wife and a golf club). Among the many looking on with interest will be Jennifer Brown, an economist with Northwestern University.

Undefined

Ms. Brown has tracked and plotted every Tiger Woods appearance, and the affect he has had on the game. As it turns out, in the tournaments he played in in the middle of 1999 and 2006, the field scored an entire.8 of a stroke higher than in the tournaments he didn't play (he does play in the hardest tournaments, but nearly a stroke difference in such a strict game is just staggering). Ms. Brown's conclusion is that the presence of such a dominant player troops the field to press harder or just quit.

Jonah Lehrer, the author of "How we Decide" took the phenomena a step added and wrote an report wondering if "the superstar effect" applies in other contentious environments. This mindset has daunting implications for strategists. It suggests that dominance in an industry may be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; that a dominant competitor may dissuade others from entering a market space, only fortifying its position.

This way of thinking only reinforces an standard strategic principle; an club is always good off owning a indispensable share in a smaller market then trying to lanch many markets at the same time. Every exertion to enter a new market requires the marketer to expend resources in a space where they have high R&D costs (unfamiliarity with the market), less brand awareness and less of a opportunity to perform market leadership.

Poor targeting is continuing in American businesses. It is typical for marketers to exertion to lanch the largest market possible; usually at their peril. Generally speaking they are well advised to seek out smaller, undefined markets (white spaces) instead of contentious within crowded larger ones.

I was recently working on a scheme for one of the nation's largest pro services firms. In my study on the Internet I came over firm that specialized in marketing and public relations for Cpa's. While I have no imperial data to prove it, my educated guess is that such a market is lucrative (as Cpa's are notoriously poor marketers). What grabbed my attention was how narrow and well defined the target was. Any Cpa viewing the website would think "these people understand my business, because that is all they do." Experts in all are experts in nothing. In a contentious bid for an accounting firm's business, such a business would have a indispensable contentious advantage over a generalist. They would be positioned as the superstar.

Now that Tiger has lost some of his luster, it will be spellbinding to see how quickly he can return to intimidating the field. Of procedure at this point, it is Tiger who is probably more intimidated by; Elin.

The Nature of Competition

Competition