Swing strategy in business competition

Swing strategy originally introduced in stock trading focuses on profiting from trend changes in prices over short period of time within a fairly long time span. In business competition swing strategy is applied in the following manner:

1. Understand the market concentration of your opponent in a particular region or an area

2. Spot few locations where you can enter into, without much risk on your part

3. Assay the degree of concentration in terms of value, volume and the number of sales personnel allotted to, by your opponent in such locations

4. Hit one of the locations with your sales professional showcasing your competitive products and offering them at reduced prices in a make-shift store

5. Move away from this location temporarily

6. Once again hit the location with more sales personnel present and offer products along with incentives such as “buy one & get one free”

7. Do not prolong your presence

8. Again visit the same location but refrain from any sales activity, in contrary removing whatever remains of the make-shift store you used to operate at

9. Pretend that you are not interested in pursuing any more competition thereby putting the opponent at ease. Your opponent assumes that he has got the coast clear for him to do whatever he pleases

10. After the lapse of 6 to 8 weeks open your permanent stall with a big bang thereby swooping big time sales. Your opponent is rendered clueless while you are riding a great wave of victory.  

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

Playing hardball and playing tough guy, compared

Playing hardball is a business manoeuvre against a single competitor or a group of competitors in a particular sector or region. But playing tough guy is generally adopted as business manoeuvre against a singer opponent. Both are of great use in business warfare. More follows:

Generally playing hardball is exercised by a business that is strong in real sense or perceives it to be a strong over competitors in a particular industry. Playing hardball requires among other things, the choice of right business manoeuvre that pins down and at the end cows down opponent seamlessly. A good example is using price-cutting as blanket instrument targeting one or more businesses in one go. There is a caveat: the imposer must have the capability of sustaining it for a considerable period.

Playing tough guy on the other hand relates to hammering, generally a weaker opponent to force him to submit to the imposer within a narrow time span. Ostensibly, the imposer cannot use this posture with a strong opponent due to the fact that he has neither capability nor ability to sustain it for a long time. There could be unexpected boon too. Mowing down a weak party could be a warning to others not to mesh around.

But what happens if the weak opponent is ingenuous enough to challenge the imposer or a would be imposer using an innovative idea in manufacturing and/or marketing a product, the like of which is not available in the imposer’s portfolio.

Peter Sellers film “The mouse that roared” shows how a weak could use an innovative stratagem to bring down a much more powerful counterparty!

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

Deterrence of fear, fear of deterrence

Deterrence can be summed up simply as “generation of fear”. This fear syndrome is based on making the opponent avoid any action that entails his losing benefits and at the same time increasing the cost of taking such action.  

Like a coin, deterrence has two sides. One relates to creation of fear as alluded to previously and fear itself on the other side where an opponent is condemned to live with the fear syndrome until such time the deterrence is breached by him or withdrawn by the imposer. In the first scenario deterrence acts as trip wire and the imposer gets the signal to move against the one who breaches it instantly in military or related reactions.

Deterrence works effectively as tactics both in military warfare and in business warfare. It has got a new application in geoeconomics as well. As usual the usual suspect is either America acting alone or together with her vassals such as NATO or European Union.

An important deterrence in the post-Soviet collapse world is the “rules based international order (RBIO)” which is not clearly stated in any publication of any international organization such as United Nations Organization (UNO). This order is cited mainly by the US officials and in lesser extent by few European nations such as UK, France and Germany.

The succinct summary of this deterrence of fear is “You do what we ask you to do and not what we are, in fact doing”. On the other hand fear of deterrence succinctly means “You are bound with us as an exceptional nation, if you try to unbound then we shall impose harsher sanctions so that you will be automatically targeted and would lose our protection in terms of geoeconomics carrot and would instead of it get geoeconomics stick”

Harsher as well as comprehensive sanctions are currently in place against the following countries arranged alphabetically: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria. Out of these Russia and Iran are subjected to most sanctions so far.

Debarring from using American Dollar and SWIFT funds transmission are ranked on the top rung of the Geoeconomics stick along with denial of insurance, shipping, travel and other areas of moving men & material. Moratorium over international contacts and representation is too damning as the spanking stick. In its extremity both Russia and Iran had their funds frozen by international banks.

The logic of the argument is that the stick works quickly and effectively so that the errant boys come over to the right side of the fence. But the tragedy is geoeconomics is not behaving the way the imposers expected it to do so. According to latest estimates Russia has outpaced both the United States and Europe in terms of gdp growth, increasing in size by 3.6% despite all those geoeconomics sanctions.

While Iran has done what even the World Bank could not dream about. Her economic growth of 4.2% in 2023 has exceeded the measly average growth rate of 1.5% of the advanced economies, including the imposers of these horrendous sanctions.

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist