Summary: The Discipline of Market Leaders

Review and Analysis of Treacy and Wiersema's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9782511021668
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema’s book: “The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market”.

This complete summary of the ideas from Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema’s book “The Discipline of Market Leaders” shows how it is important for companies to select a unique value to deliver to customers in order to be truly successful. The authors explains the three key value disciplines that the current market leaders have applied and how you can apply them in your own company. By following these principles, you will be able to deliver ongoing value to your customers to set you apart from the competitors.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key principles
• Expand your business knowledge

To learn more, read “The Discipline of Market Leaders” and learn from the most successful companies to start thinking about business differently.

Summary of The Discipline Of Market Leaders (Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema)

1.
MARKET LEADERSHIP
FOR THE 1990S AND BEYOND

Main Idea

Today’s customers want more of whatever they value the most. Consequently, today’s market leaders excel by:

1. Selecting one component of value they will excel at.
2. Continually raising customer expectations and definitions of value for that specific component.
3. Structuring their entire operations to deliver added value in that component again and again better than any of their competitors can.

Supporting Ideas

The modern consumer market is characterized by increasing expectations. For example:

1. Price sensitive markets
   Once upon a time, companies automatically increased their prices annually. That would be the course to oblivion today, however. If consumers value low cost, they now expect next year’s products to be even cheaper as better production and distribution technologies come on stream.
2. State-of-the-art markets
   Consumers expect the next generation of products to add new features that will amaze and dazzle.
3. Time sensitive markets
   Consumers now expect their purchase transactions to be short, efficient and accurate. They penalize companies that are difficult or mistake prone.
4. Premium service markets
   The premium service of yesterday has become the minimum expected level of service today. Consumers today paying for premium service expect the company to treat them as if they were its only customer, and bend everything to meet their needs.
5. Product quality
   Instead of viewing quality as an add-on feature, today’s consumers expect high-quality, low-cost products with features nobody has ever seen before to be released to the market on a regular basis.

In fact, there are four business premises that underlie success in business today. These premises are:

1. Companies can no longer raise their prices as their costs escalate. Instead, companies have to find innovative ways to lower costs to meet the raised expectations of their customers.
2. Companies can no longer afford to provide anything less than hassle-free service to their customers. Customers have now become conditioned to expecting effortless, flawless and instantaneous service.
3. Companies should not fall into the trap of assuming good basic service is sufficient. Customers are now demanding premium service -- and their definition of premium is steadily increasing as well.
4. Companies cannot compromise on quality and product issues. Customers expect superior products that embody eye-popping innovations to be brought to market on an ongoing basis from year to year.

Once upon a time, the seller was king, and customers would faithfully buy whatever trusted companies chose to market. Today, however, the buyer is king, and the new code of competition is such the customers have taken control.

In this environment, companies which try to be the best in everything end up excelling at nothing. This is based on three bedrock principles:

1. Different customers buy different kinds of value. It’s impossible to be the best in all dimensions -- therefore, the path to success lies in narrowing rather than broadening the company’s emphasis until the company is focused on just one key eleme...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Book Presentation
• Summary of The Discipline Of Market Leaders (Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema)
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright