A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

106 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
the higher price you associated <strong>with</strong> it. Of course, your advertising would
be in channels most likely to reach this segment of the overall market.
But let’s shift gears somewhat. Let’s say you have a totally new innovation.
You could introduce the product into the mass market instead of concentrating
on a niche. You are the first to market and know that all
segments of the market would be interested in purchasing your product.
However, you make the decision to go to the high end only, because there
you will have higher profit margins due to the much higher price which
you can charge. So, you enter this market as planned.
However, let’s assume it would have been much better to adopt a mass
marketing strategy. Maybe you would have sold so much of the product that
it would have made up for the lower per-unit margin and, moreover, you
would have captured most of the market. Anyone else entering the market
would have been perceived as number two. It would have been difficult for
anyone to take the lead from you. Those could be cirtical elements.
If you proceeded <strong>with</strong> your poor strategy and your tactics weren’t too
good, you probably would take another look. You might even re-enter <strong>with</strong>
“the correct” mass marketing strategy. If your implementation and lowerlevel
tactics were really good <strong>with</strong> the niche, segmentation strategy you
adopted, you would probably continue profitable, but not taking full
advantage of your lead in the marketplace.
Now let’s say that a year or so later, a competitor enters the market <strong>with</strong>
the correct strategy that you should have adopted in the first place. Through
mass marketing, the competitor takes over the market and becomes number
one, and now you may not ever be able to break out of your niche. This
happens. This competitor eventually may even take your niche market
from you as well. In this sense, marketing and selling are adversarial.
Another Look at Ford’s Early Success
Henry Ford did not establish the first successful automobile company.
That would be Oldsmobile, which was founded in 1897 by Ransom E.
Olds. Cadillac was founded in 1902 by Henry M. Leland. It too was a successful
brand. Henry Ford didn’t create the Ford Motor Company until
1903. Ford’s genius wasn’t the assembly line, which had already been
introduced in the meat-packing business, but the fact that first he made a
marketing strategy decision to produce cars for the masses and then he
adopted the assembly line.