Competing for Choice

Developing winning brand strategies

Vola Press

Lars Finskud

ISBN 0-9545328-1-3

Every manager knows that robust strategy plays a crucial role in any successful enterprise. Yet for all the volumes that have been written on the subject, two things remain true. Strategy is complex, and many companies still get it wrong.

This book is about choice. It starts from the idea that a single purpose underlies all business strategy: competing for choice. Businesses compete for the choice of customers or consumers. Not only that, they also compete for the choice of other key stakeholders, including employees, partners, and investors.

Brands play a pivotal role in this process: they are the vehicles or focal points that businesses use in competing for choice. The proposition, qualities, image, and values that businesses provide and embed in their brands are the basis for earning the choice of customers and stakeholders.

But competing for choice isn't easy. Today's rapidly changing world of profound geopolitical upheavals, industry deregulation, growing competitive intensity, better-informed and newly empowered consumers, and multiple stakeholders means that management must earn the choice of a stakeholders under conditions that are complex and dynamic. Despite this, companies frequently make important strategic decisions on the basis of intuition rather than solid fact. A deep understanding of the dynamics of business and brand choice would help them to make much more robust strategic decisions.

Competing for Choice provides just such an understanding. The approach it describes has been developed through years of research and practice, and tested and refined through work with many different industries and brands. It shows senior managers how to rethink strategy and allocate their investments more effectively - and radically improve their business performance as a result.

Contents

Lars Finskud

Lars Finskud is director and founder of Vanguard Brand Management. Before setting up Vanguard in 1998, he was the brand specialist at McKinsey & Company.  He has worked with a broad spectrum of global clients in a variety of sectors: fast-moving consumer goods, luxury goods, retail, financial services, pharmaceuticals, beverages, tobacco, and food industries.

He can be contacted via www.competing4choice.com

VOLA Press

Vola Press was established by experts in business dynamics and strategy to publish books that help managers at every level make substantial - and sustainable - improvements in their business performance.