Market Leader
A market leader is a brand, product, or a firm that has the largest percentage of total sales in terms of revenue (the market share) of a market. A market leader often dominates all his competitors in areas such as: customer loyalty, distribution coverage, image, perceived value, price, profit, and promotional spending. To be the leader in the market, the company needs to be innovative, agile, revolutionary, obsessive and supportive.
Market leader objectives are to continue expanding their total market by finding more new consumers to purchase their product, creating new uses for the current product which they are selling, and to encourage more usage among the current consumers.
A market leader should always be equipped with a defense strategy that will help defend against any new threats that might threaten their position as a market leader. Also, another objective to achieve is to keep increase their market share of their product.
An example of market leaders are: Coco-Cola (soft drinks), McDonald’s (fast food), Caterpillar (large construction equipment), Kodak (photographic film), Wal-Mart (retailing), and Boeing (aircraft).
Market Challenger
Market challengers are runner-up companies that aggressively attack competitors to get more market share. A market challenger’s strategic objective is to topple down the current market leader and to take over its place.
A market challenger will always strive to attack the current market leader, or other firms that matches its own size, or smaller and local regional competitors in hope to be the leader in the product or service which they are offering.
In essence the challenger has three strategic alternatives that are available to the company: (a) a direct or head-on att ...