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

~ (Author), Fred Wiersema (Author) "Why is it that Casio can sell a calculator more cheaply than Kellogg's can sell a box of cornflakes?..." (more)
Key Phrases: operationally excellent companies, customer credo, operationally excellent company, Frank Steele, Universal Card Services, Henry Ford (more...)

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.

Product Description

Now in paperbackÜ A breakthrough approach to strategy that will revolutionize how you think about customers, competition, markets, even the fundamental structure of your business. Paper. DLC: Competition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; Expanded edition (January 9, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201407191
• ISBN-13: 978-0201407198
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,723 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 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 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

34 of 36 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)

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.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to Select, Focus, and Dominate, July 16, 2000

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The message of this important book is that "no company can succeed today by trying to be all things to all people. It must instead find the unique value that it alone can deliver to a chosen market. Why and how this is done are the two key questions the book addresses." The authors focus with rigor and precision on three different "disciplines": operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy. It remains for any company (for any organization, for that matter) to determine which of the three should be its primary discipline but all are obviously important...indeed interdependent. Nonetheless, one discipline should be pre-eminent. The authors examine dozens of companies which have concentrated primarily on one of the three "disciplines" so that they can select their customers and then narrow their focus inorder to gain and sustain dominance within their respective marketplaces. I think this book will be of substantial value to executives in any organization but of greatest value to those in organizations which are small-to-midsize. Unless they have dysfunctional management and/or defective products, their mastery of that discipline will enable them to compete more effectively against larger organizations which (obviously) have greater resources available. My own view is that as B2B and B2B2C continue to increase at exponentially greater velocity, leadership of ANY market will require mastery of customer intimacy and at least one (but preferably both) of the other two disciplines. In that event, the insights which Treacy and Wiersema share will be even more valuable.