The Marketing Book 5th Edition

Competitors

Channels Customers

Firm

56 The Marketing Book

distribution is clearly seen as a solely logistical
function. On top of this, customers are very
much represented as ‘at a distance’.
More recently, marketing has recognized
much more explicitly this further range of
issues, including the key role of competition
and the importance of a longer term so-called
relationship perspective, particularly in the
context of customers. On top of this, various
entities in the distribution chain are now clearly
seen as very active intermediaries rather than
just passive logistics agents.
However, the development of this more
complex dynamic representation of the com-
petitive market, which can be seen broadly in
the marketing strategy triangle of the 3Cs (see
Figure 4.2) – customers, competitors and chan-
nels – also implies a more fluid and complex
context for systematic modelling purposes.

Customers, competitors and

channels

The early, more static model of the nature of
the competitive market, which informed many
of the still current and useful tools of analysis,
was both positional and non-interactive. It
was assumed that the market backcloth, often
referred to as the product-market space,
remained relatively stable and static so that, at

least in terms of first order effects, strategies

could be defined in positional terms. Similarly,

the general perspective, strongly reinforced by

representations such as that in Figure 4.1, was

that actions by the firm would generally not

create equivalent reactions from the relatively

passive ‘consumers’. This perspective on the

nature of marketing, which might be fairly

labelled the ‘patient’ perspective (Wensley,

1990), is to be found rather widely in market-

ing texts and commentaries, despite the

continued espousal of slogans such as ‘the

customer is king’.

With the adoption of the more interactive

and dynamic perspective implied in the 3Cs

approach, the nature of market-based strategy

becomes much more complex. At the same

time, we must be wary of the temptation to

continue to apply the old tools and concepts

without considering critically whether they are

appropriate in new situations. They represent

in general a special or limiting case, which

quite often requires us to distort the nature of

environment that we are attempting to charac-

terize. The key question as to how far this

distortion is, as our legal colleagues would say,

material is another but frequently unresolved

matter. This notion of materiality is really

linked to impact on actions rather than just

understanding and the degree to which, in

practice, particular forms of marketing strategy

Figure 4.2 The marketing strategy triangle of the 3Cs