【正文】 market. Second, he called local customers and asked them for their support, pointing out that if the smaller supplier was driven off the market, its customers would be facing a monopolist. The shortterm price cuts would turn into longterm price hikes. The supplier identified solutions that eschewed further price cuts and thus averted a price war. Intelligent analysis that leads to accurate diagnosis is more than half the cure. The process emphasizes understanding the opportunities for pricing actions based on current market trends and responding to petitors’ actions based on the players and their resources. Not only is it necessary to understand why a price war is occurring or may occur, it also is critical to recognize where to look for the resources to do battle. Good diagnoses involve analyzing four key areas in the theater of operations. They are customer issues such as price sensitivity and the customer segments that may emerge if prices change。 pany issues such as a business’s cost structures, capabilities, and strategic positioning。 petitor issues, such as a rival’s cost structures, capabilities, and strategic positioning。 and contributor issues, or the other players in the industry whose selfinterest or profiles may affect the oute of a price war. (For a more detailed explanation of such analyses, see the sidebar ―Analyzing the Battleground.‖) Companies that step back and examine those four areas carefully often find that they actually have quite a few different optionsincluding defusing the conflict, fighting it out on several fronts, or retreating. We’ll look at some of those strategies and how panies have deployed them successfully. Stop the War Before It Starts There are several ways to stop a price war before it starts. One is to make sure your petitors understand the rationale behind your pricing policies. In other words, reveal your strategic intentions. Price matching policies, everyday low pricing, and other public statements may municate to petitors that you intend to fight a price war using all possible resources. But frequently these declarations about low prices, or about not engaging in price promotions, aren’t lowprice strategies at all. Such announcements are simply a way to tell petitors that you prefer to pete on dimensions other than price. When your petitors agree that such petition will be more profitable than peting on price, they’ll tend to go along. That is precisely what happened when WinnDixie followed the Big Star supermarket chain in North Carolina and announced that it, too, would meet or beat mutual rival Food Lion’s prices. After two years, the number of equipriced products among 79 monly purchased brand items at the supermarkets had more than doubled. Further, the overall market price level had increased for these products. What happened? The stores stopped peting on price. In fact, the data suggest that Food Lion raised its prices after its petitors announced they would match Food Lion’s prices. Tactic Example Nonprice Responses Reveal your strategic intentions and capabilities Offer to match petitors39。 prices, offer everyday low pricing, or reveal your cost advantage Compete on quality Increase product differentiation by adding features to a product, or build awareness of existing features and their benefits. Emphasize the performance risks in lowpriced options. Coopt contributors Form strategic partnerships by offering cooperative or exclusive deals with suppliers, resellers, or providers of related services Price Responses Use plex price actions Offer bundled prices, twopart pricing, quantity discounts, price promotions, or loyalty programs for products Introduce new products Introduce flanking brands that pete in customer segments that are being challenged by petitors Deploy simple price actions Adjust the product39。s regular price in response to a petitor39。s price change or another potential entry into the market 出處： Harvard Business Review,Sept 01,2020 (二） 標(biāo)題： Strategies to Fight LowCost Rivals 原文： It’s easier to fight the enemy you know than one you don’t. With galeforce winds of petition lashing every industry, panies must invest a lot of money, people, and time to fight archrivals. They find it tough, challenging, and yet strangely reassuring to take on familiar opponents, whose ambitions, strategies, weaknesses, and even strengths resemble their own. CEOs can easily pare their game plans and prowess with their doppelg228。ngers’ by tracking stock prices by the minute, if they desire. Thus, Coke duels Pepsi, Sony battles Philips and Matsushita, Avis bats Hertz, Procter amp。 Gamble takes on Unilever, Caterpillar clashes with Komatsu, Amazon spars with eBay, Tweedledum fights Tweedledee. However, this obsession with traditional rivals has blinded panies to the threat from disruptive, lowcost petitors. All over the world, especially in Europe and North America, organizations that have business models and technologies different from those of market leaders are mushrooming. Such panies offer products and services at prices dramatically lower than the prices established businesses charge, often by harnessing the forces of deregulation, globalization, and technological innovation. By the early 1990s, the first price warriors, such as Costco Wholesale, Dell, Southwest Airlines, and WalMart, had gobbled up the lunches of several incumbents. Now, on both sides of the Atlantic, a second wave is rolling in: Germany’s Aldi supermarkets, India’s Aravind Eye Hospitals, Britain’s Direct Line Insurance, the online stock brokerage E*Trade, China’s Huawei in telemunications equipment, Sweden’s IKEA furniture, Ireland’s Ryanair, Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals, and the United States’ Vanguard Group in asset management.