Market Driven Strategy: Processes for Creating Value

Now in its 21st printing, George S. Day’s Market Driven Strategy first defined what it means to be market- driven. Providing a foundation for Day’s new companion volume The Market Driven Organization, this seminal work remains a vital resource for a generation of managers struggling to align their organizations to volatile markets. Contending that the rate of change in the market has clearly outstripped the speed at which a conventionally managed company can respond, Day makes a compelling case for first creating superior customer value, without which there can be no share-holder value. He presents a proven market-driven approach to formulating and implementing competitive strategy at the business-unit level – in the trenches – based upon materials that have been empirically tested and critiqued in more than 200 internal executive programs and strategic planning sessions at such companies as U.S. West, General Motors, Marriott, Kodak, and General Electric.

Day introduces the five critical, interdependent choices that managers must make to create a market-driven strategy. With dozens of examples from companies such as Otis Elevator, GE, H.J. Heinz, Ikea, Nestle, Acuson, and 3M, he shows how forward-thinking companies select their markets, differentiate their products, choose their communication and distribution channels, decide on the scale and scope of their support activities, and select future areas for growth. Finally, Day persuasively documents the commitment to thinking and planning processes at these winning companies that harnesses the power of bottom-up understanding of customers and competitive realities with top-down vision and leadership.