文档介绍：Harvard Business School 9-581-107
Rev. November 30, 1984
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Market Selection and Direction:
Role of Product Portfolio Planning
The logical first step in marketing strategy is the selection of markets in which pete.
This decision requires an appraisal of pany’s ability to meet a potential market’s requirements
or, alternatively, to alter the market’s requirements to match what it can deliver.
Market selection cannot be separated from the broader corporate strategy issue of what
business(es) pany should be in. For example, pany may decide to be in the “automotive
supply business” and elect to serve the “shock absorber original equipment market.” The difference
between these business and market definitions is more a question of level of aggregation than of
distinct dividing lines. Nevertheless marketers’ major involvement is in market selection while
general managers and corporate strategists are more concerned with issues of broader business
selection.
A second fundamental decision in marketing strategy is the choice of “market direction”:
should pany seek to build, hold, or shrink its position in a given market?
To translate these high-level decisions into concrete policies, pany develops a
particular marketing mix, using such traditional analytical tools as segmentation, positioning, and
differentiation. panies focus too narrowly on the marketing-mix decisions, they may lose
sight of fundamental strategic concerns in their choice of markets. The growth of strategic planning
over the last decade has helped managers attend explicitly to market selection and direction.
Terminology
This note uses the pany or corporation to denote the legal parent entity which
operates a number of businesses. These businesses may or may not have a anizational
existence as divisions or subsidiaries. pete by selling products to markets. For
instance, the Monopoly board game is a branded product sold by the Parker Brothers toy busi