The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market [Paperback]

Michael Treacy (Author), Fred Wiersema (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 1997

Why is it that Casio can sell a calculator more cheaply than Kellogg’s can sell a box of corn flakes? Why can FedEx “absolutely, positively” deliver your package overnight but airlines have trouble keeping track of your bags? What does your company do better than anyone else? What unique value do you provide to your customers? How will you increase that value next year? As customers’ demands for the highest quality products, best services, and lowest prices increase daily, the rules for market leadership are changing. Once powerful companies that haven’t gotten the message are faltering, while others, new and old, are thriving. In disarmingly simple and provocative terms, Treacy and Wiersema show what it takes to become a leader in your market, and stay there, in an ever more sophisticated and demanding world.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Consultants and business strategists Treacy and Wiersema provide the conceptual model for companies to attain and sustain market leadership. Their plan is simple: put unmatched value (best product, best total solution, or best total cost) in the marketplace while meeting threshold standards in other dimensions of value. Making the improvement of the chosen value to customers the focus of the entire company will result in corresponding shareholder value. The authors follow up their theory with practical guidelines for constructing an appropriate operational model, and offer many examples using well-known companies. A landmark work in market strategy that goes beyond TQM principles, this volume is essential for entrepreneurs and for public, academic, and corporate libraries.
Nancy Myers, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Michael Treacy is a leading authority and lecturer on business strategy and corporate transformation. He is the founder of Treacy & Company LLC, a Boston-based management consulting and venture firm.Fred Wiersema is the founder of Ibex Partners, specializing in strategic and management team alignment. He is affiliated with CSC Index, the international consulting firm, where he was formerly senior vice president. Michael Treacy is a leading authority and lecturer on business strategy and corporate transformation. He is the founder of Treacy & Company LLC, a Boston-based management consulting and venture firm.Fred Wiersema is the founder of Ibex Partners, specializing in strategic and management team alignment. He is affiliated with CSC Index, the international consulting firm, where he was formerly senior vice president.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; Expanded edition (January 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201407191
• ISBN-13: 978-0201407198
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #69,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Customer Service

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for Customer Perspective in Balanced Scorecard, November 17, 2004

By 

Peter Leerskov "The Strategist, www.lace.dk" (Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market (Paperback)

This book's concepts for strategic marketing management are so widely accepted that the popular Balanced Scorecard concept of Kaplan and Norton in 2001 decided to adopt the ideas for the "customer perspective".

The authors manage to take Michael Porter's two generic competitive strategies - Differentiation and Cost Leader - and elaborate on these to an extent never presented so elegantly before. In the process, they discover a third generic strategy - Customer Intimacy.

Thus, Treacy and Wiersema distinguish between focusing on the following value dimensions:
- Operational excellence (cost leadership / focus on supply chain management)
- Product leadership (innovation / focus on product lifecycle management)
- Customer Intimacy (service leadership /focus on customer relationship management)

These are the FOUR RULES that govern market leaders' actions:
Rule 1: Provide the best offering in the marketplace by excelling in a specific dimension of value
Rule 2: Maintain threshold standards on the other dimensions of value
Rule 3: Dominate your market by improving value year after year
Rule 4: Build a well-tuned operating model dedicated to delivering unmatched value

Expanding on the fourth rule - operating models - may the best long-term contribution of this book. The authors explain in detail and via case stories how the operating models differ for each of the three value propositions. In practice, I've learned that by explaining the operating models, many people can easier find themselves depicted than in the overall generic dimensions of cost, service or product leadership.

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE or Cost Leadership - Best total cost - operating model:
Key success factor: Formula!
Golden rule: Variety kills efficiency
Culture: Disciplined teamwork; Process focused; Conformance, "one size fits all" mindset
Organization: Centralized functions; high skills at the core of the organization
Core processes: Product delivery and basic service cycle; built on standard, no frills fixed assets
Management Systems: Command and control; Compensation fixed to cost and quality; transaction profitability tracking
Information Technology: Integrated, low-cost transaction systems; Mobile and remote technologies

PRODUCT LEADERSHIP - Best product - operating model:
Key success factor: Talent!
Golden rule: Cannibalize your success with breakthroughs
Culture: Concept, future driven; Experimentation, "out of the box" mindset; Attack, go for it, win
Organization: Ad-hoc, organic, and cellular; High skills abound in loose-knit structures
Core processes: Invention, Commercialisation; Market exploitation; Disjoint work procedures
Management Systems: Decisive, risk oriented; Reward individuals' innovation capacity; Product lifecycle profitability
Information Technology: Person-to-person communications systems; Technologies enabling cooperation and knowledge management

CUSTOMER INTIMACY - Best total solution - operating model:
Key success factor: Solution!
Golden rule: Solve the client's broader problem
Culture: Client and filed driven; Variation: "Have it your way" mindset
Organization: Entrepreneurial client teams; High skills in the field
Core processes: Client acquisition and development; Solution development; Flexible and responsive work procedures
Management Systems: Revenue and share-of-wallet driven; Rewards based in part on client feedback; Lifetime value of client
Information Technology: Customer databases linking internal and external information; Knowledge bases built around expertise

If you're interested in Customer Intimacy, you may want to add Wiersema's additional book on only this strategy to your shopping basket. I highly recommend both paperback books ... great value for money ;-)

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Common sense marketing perspective, February 21, 2000

By 

J. G. Heiser (Sunninghill, Berks) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market (Paperback)

Winning firms focus on one of three customer value disciplines: product leadership, customer intimacy, or operational excellence. Trying to be all things to everybody is tantamount to being nothing for anyone. If your firm can't get its act together, you'll find this an inspiring book that makes a compelling case that success is only possible by having the courage to focus on specific tasks & disciplines. This seems very elementary, but I've observed many firms that refused to choose what they wanted to be, ensuring that they became nothing. This book is helpful in positioning exercises.

I have two concerns about the book. 1, it doesn't need to be this long in order to get the central idea across. 2, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this model is counterproductive in a Geoff Moore tornado period. If you're in a high-tech tornado, wait until Main Street before applying discipline.

Aside from these caveats, I still find the simple model presented in this book as being useful in analyzing market approaches. You have to understand the model in order to know when it isn't appropriate. Product Managers, sales, marketing and product development staff need to be aware of this book and its ideas.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Buy the Harvard Business Review article reprint instead, November 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market (Paperback)

Excellent content; just not a book's worth. The authors say virtually nothing more than they did in their superb HBR article of the same name a few years back. Another case of a fine 10-page idea gratuitously expanded into a book.