Breaking Compromises: Opportunities for Action in Consumer Markets - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MICHAEL J. SILVERSTEIN is a Senior Vice President and head of the Consumer and Retail practice of The Boston Consulting Group.

GEORGE STALK Jr. is a Senior Vice President, head of The Boston Consulting Group's Innovation and Marketing initiatives, and comanager of BCG's Toronto office. He is the coeditor of Perspectives on Strategy from The Boston Consulting Group and coauthor of the critically acclaimed Competing Against Time and Kaisha: The Japanese Corporation.

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Praise for Breaking Compromises "Take this book along on your next business trip. In about the time it takes to jet from New York to Chicago, you will gain fresh, practical insights into today′s most challenging consumer goods topics, from e–commerce to globalization." –Robert A. Eckert, President and CEO, Kraft Foods, Inc. "These essays detail how successful companies find ideas, bring together resources to test them, learn from their mistakes, and, ultimately, how they succeed." –Steven S Reinemund, President and COO, PepsiCo, Inc. "Branded manufacturers need to refocus on developing new products to fend off consolidating retailers and private labels. Retailers need to uncover the missing link between the company′s strategy and its implementation at the front line to provide the kind of service customers are demanding. The challenge is continuous innovation, which is about ideas and process, not one or the other. The essays in Breaking Compromises speak to the most pressing issues across the entire range of consumer businesses today." –William D. Perez, President and COO Worldwide Consumer Products, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. "The consumer industry is undergoing a revolution, not only in how its products and services are made, distributed, marketed, and sold, but also in how consumers learn about, shop for, purchase, and repurchase them. The ideas in Breaking Compromises will help you not only to survive the upheaval in your environment but ultimately to leverage it for improved performance and the highest returns." –Indra K. Nooyi, Senior Vice President Corporate Strategy and Development, PepsiCo, Inc. "If the past decade has taught us anything about retail, it is that change is not only inevitable, it is imperative. To stand still is to declare defeat. To overcome complacency, outsmart and outexecute the competition, and stay ahead of shifting markets, a business must constantly and consistently replenish its stock of fresh insights. This compendium of business practices and wisdom is a very good first step." –Dan Finkelman, Senior Vice President Brand and Business Planning, The Limited, Inc.

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"To break compromises, executives must first break with the conventional wisdom of their industry--about customers, about industry practices, and about the economics of the business. When they do, faster growth and improved profitability are the result."--from Breaking Compromises

Innovation drives competition in today's volatile global marketplace, and a company's most potent competitive advantage resides in its ability to continually generate fresh insights and innovations. As evidenced by the experiences of some of the most spectacular business successes of the past several years, the key to sustained growth through innovation is knowing how to identify and "break" the fundamental compromises, or trade-offs, that industries impose upon their customers. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a trade-off is the time-honored idea that lower price equals lower quality.

"The idea of breaking compromises can be a useful organizing principle to focus an entire organization on growth. It provides a systematic way to search for growth opportunities that are logical extensions of a company's existing business system."

In Breaking Compromises, members of the world-renowned Boston Consulting Group show you how major players such as Charles Schwab, Circuit City, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Amazon.com, and others have achieved sustained growth by exposing compromises and recalibrating the fundamental customer/product equation. More importantly, they teach you how to strategically position your organization to be able to continuously uncover and manage fresh growth opportunities through an unswerving focus on breaking compromises.

"For a company to grow by breaking compromises, it must have the creativity to translate customer dissatisfactions into new value propositions, the flexibility to engage in constant reorientation of its business system, and the nerve to challenge business-as-usual in its industry."

Available to the general business audience for the first time, the essays compiled in Breaking Compromises first appeared in Action in Consumer Markets, a monthly publication written by members of BCG's Consumer and Retail practice. These essays are based on the members' experiences working with many of the world's major companies on the front lines of the most competitive, rapidly changing business environment in history. In them, you will learn about the latest compromise-breaking strategies for branding, e-commerce, global markets, customer retention, and more.

A groundbreaking exploration of the major forces driving the consumer and retail businesses over the past half decade, Breaking Compromises is essential reading for marketing executives and managers.