The main aim of this study is to determine and learn the competitive strategies adopted by companies to survive the effects of recession. While the main objectives are to:

        Hillier (1999) suggests that at times of recessions firms need to carefully consider about linking with the customers at the very basic level i.e. the level of trust and belief. This is what that helps Apple to move from computers to iPods to iPhones and finally to iPads. Even though many other brands may have similar touch screen functionalities, there are many things that make people to go for Apple products. Another crucial aspect is that people are more interested in comparing prices during the hard times- which means that they are interested in moving towards another brand when they look out for good deals. Right and apt marketing strategies can even help newly established companies to gain trust in the minds of the customers. One of the worthwhile example to quote here is Microsoft, which was started right in the midst of a tough recession time. However, it is not that the expensive products the people always trench. They look out for quality and reliability and are ready to spend even more for such kind of products. It is clearly up to the marketing specialist to convince the potential customers that the company offers something better than other companies. This means that, companies need not have to be a well-known or a famous one with long years of establishment. People buy products very safely during recession, but never stops spending money.

Thorp (2009) suggests the following key strategies could help companies to overcome recession.

1. Visibility

        There are chances that the customers can forget the products, if a very low budget is allocated for marketing. If it is being reduced totally, is a risk with unrecognizability. This might result in making the company’s profile less visible and it may result in taking many years to correct. One of the better evidence of playing safe is the perilous strategy than the airline sectors reaction to 9/11 terrorist attacks. Majority of the airline companies reduced the marketing spend following the terrorist attacks thinking that the customers will opt for other travelling options. But few companies like Ryanair made an enthusiastic marketing crusade to bring back people to skies. The significant growth that this airline made in the past few years underlines the importance of marketing during tough times. Usually, customers judge that a brand is down when it has fallen silent which in turn will accelerate the process of failure. An important aspect here that if the firm is not in the game, then it is a chance for the competitors to gain an edge that most of the firms least wish to have. Proctor and Gamble implemented an innovative approach to create an emotional connection to their brand. They sponsored evening shows on radio so as to entertain people who were looking out for relieving stress during the tough times. The shows didn’t focus on the products of P & G but were called Soaps. This lead to the origin of “”Soap Operas” and foundation stone for some shows like The Amazing Race, American Idol and Celebrity Apprentice. During recession time firms must consider ways to leverage their advertising expenditure which takes advantage of technology, cultural phenomena and social media. As with any recession period it can be found that sustained market success can be accomplished only through sustained visibility.

2. We are there with you

        One of the core marketing strategies of Icelanders is that even though they have a currency crisis now, if anyone has dreamed at least once to go there; are more probable to go there owing to the currency crisis. At times of recession, many companies fight together for a very limited share of market. Companies need to show that they are on the side of customers. For this purpose, they will have to define a marketing strategy making the customers convince that the company understands their needs. Tesco is one of those companies which have got a strong marketing attention. They always look out for what the customer’s needs and acts in a suitable way. Contrasting to some other big retail players in the market, Tesco never thinks of cutting back its service or reduces quality or closes its underperforming stores. They’ll never reduce the quantity of products and then continue selling them at the same price. However, they are taking vital steps like developing their own labelled products and exploring ways to cut costs of its standard products without even conceding quality.

        Another example is that Nestle is reaping the benefits of its customer oriented approach. Nestle has got the strategy of selling expensive as well as very cheap versions of the same product. This contains products like Nido milk powder, Nestle coffee powder, which are sold in very small packets in the shops. Other ways by which companies show the customers that they are with them is by providing loyalty schemes, incentives and vouchers. It is always very important to think well about what customers need and respond to those needs accordingly.  This can be in the form of discounts or by even giving more time for pay over than the normal time. All these strategies can create can create a huge sway on cash flow even for very small firms. One of the very significant aspects is always staying visibly nearer to the customers and makes them know that the firm can understand the situation they are going through and the firm is trying their best to respond suitably. This can be done by developing a spirit of trust and purpose, concentrating on the things that the company values and shares.

        The continued debate that the media made during the financial crisis has brought a long lasting impact and change in perception of banks. Most of the banks have been insulted are suffered the loss of many customers. When many companies cut their spending on marketing during the tough times, it is a golden opportunity to get the targeted customers, with low level of competition and at very low rates too.

3. Differentiate

        In a very highly competitive market, it is really very difficult to differentiate a particular product or service. According to Dobbs (2002) one of the best ways of differentiation is by offering a better quality of service. However, encouraging customers to buy very less products is best way to stand out from the crowded market and this will help in increasing the revenue. Amazon is a good example persuading customers to pay less which is a highly positive action plan. “When I ordered a book from amazon, the next day I got a warning message from them that I bought the same book from amazon back in February. The company asked me ‘Are you sure u want a copy again?’ The company could have profited the mistake I made. But they really did a responsible thing, which created a good impression of the brand in my mind.”

        Changing the company’s attention with regards to association with the company’s brand is one the best way to differentiate products and services. Many obvious services like generous product return policies, money back guarantee; increased customer service timings can help a lot in improving the overall look and feel of the company. Exploring a clear cut difference is about to think from the customer eyes. This forms the real kernel of marketing. A clear cut tracking of the competitors and their strategies is essential for this purpose. One of the key notions of differentiation is avoiding copy and recognizing something unique for the organization.

4. Adapt

        During recession, companies need to think more creatively than before so as to explore new ways to adapt to the new extremely difficult circumstances. For example just consider a retailer selling spare parts of auto motives.  Owing to reduction in sales of new cars, majority of the people are driving old second hand cars. The retailer can target these groups of customers by persuading them to buy the products and thus saving the money. According to Hillier (1999) Experimentation is very critical during recession. Some companies try many sorts of innovative activities like: altering the shop floor layouts that meet the customer needs, offering more range of basic products at lower costs etc. Customers’ spend more prices on individual products during recession. Previously, customers may have on very low cost items with a speculation that more sophisticated products will come out in few moths time.

5. Count less on discounts

        One of the most clear cut responses to recession is to reduce the price to keep the company floating during the hard times. Some companies find that this decision is cheaper, less risky and easier. This can also be considered as an alternative to huge investments made for marketing. Cutting the budgets during recession, will help in shielding profits for a short span of time. This will result in making the brand weaker and previous efforts made to bring up the brand might go in vain. It is always best to make the company’s share of voice above the share of market during recession. This will help the company to gain a long term profitability which will hugely outweigh the short term cost cuts. While in case if other brands reduces the budgets, the benefit of stabilizing SOV over SOM will be greater. To sum up, cost cutting can be considered as a good step forward, but many evidences shows that negative effects are nearer that might devaluate the business. If the panic is communicated by the companies to the customer, they too will get panicked and the buying mentality of the customer will get reduced.

6. Technology

Dobbs (2002) suggests that technology helps a great deal in helping companies to link and communicate with the customers and react more efficiently and effectively to the needs and wants of the customers. Centring more on mobile and electronic campaigns in lieu of direct mail can help in saving money and at the same time make the product or service always visible to the customers. Many reports suggest that small businesses can use email marketing as an effective tool to markets their products. Reports further states that communicating regularly with old customers and new projections is maintaining the business at the front during the tough times of recession. These email addresses are bought directly from customers so that they won’t get hassled by unwanted mails. If customers find the emails to be relevant and useful, the companies can expect returns very quickly. So as to make email based marketing to be more effective the incorporation must be two way. The customers should be able to know about the company and the company should be in a situation to recognize the customer’s preferences. Sales promotions on social networking sites like Facebook, orkut and twitter are also another effective and low cost way of reaching potential customers.

         In an Airline survey conducted, the results reveal that almost seventy percent of the respondents suggested that social networking sites are not so important for marketing. Social networking aids companies to directly reach out for new customers. However, it epicentres around the quality of customer experience. This really helps out the companies in a way that majority of the customer becomes evangelists of good branded products and services. For example Primark has a Facebook group titled ’Primark appreciation society’ which has about one hundred thousand members. Questions like ‘here should there be a Primark where there isn’t one’, ‘New Dresses-Your opinion’ are quite often asked here. These questions provide valuable insight to companies regarding customer tastes and preferences. Moreover, healthy debates with customers can help a lot in redefining marketing strategies.

3.2. Business Optimization Strategies

• Review and Realign Operational and Marketing Strategy

According to Wright (2010) gaining competitive advantage is very important for profitability. Competitive advantage can be defined by maintaining an edge over the competition through big sales, margins and retaining customers in any tough economic situation. This can be done by defining strategies for the business, how to compete in the market and set targets that should be achieved in a period of time. A clear cut focus on timing is also very important here. Wright 2010 further suggests that this requires paying keen attention to forecasts on industry and economic situation, aligning strategies to change in market and rearranging the resources, expenditure and operations. Defining a strategy that prepares and anticipates for shifts in market allows for even transition and sustains the competitive edge by maintaining the production capacity, customer satisfaction and profit margins. This places the management of the company in a proactive mode rather than in a reactive mode and eases the fears and tensions of the employees. A proactive management would assemble a group of stakeholders and decision makers. According to Wright (2010) the operational and marketing strategies can be revised using the following process:

1. Scanning the Market

Information regarding the market changes can be collected from various sources like marketing firms, consultants, online resources and trade associations. Moreover, the financial statements and sales documents should be reviewed to find the source of top twenty percent of the sales. Determining what such customers have in common like demographics, buying patterns, geography, company size etc. are really helpful. It is always good to survey these customers to identify to get information on their needs, wants, fears, budget, spending habits, perception of the company and preferences to the company products and services. This helps in finding what, where, how, when and why the customers buy. This information can be used to strengthening the relationship with the customers by understanding and meeting their needs and wants.

2. Value Proposition

The value equation can be used effectively to reassess the strategy.

Value= Benefits/Cost

This equation explains that customers buy since they perceive value and value can be increased by decreasing the costs or increasing the benefits. As there are so many uncertainties in a recession like the duration of recession, how the customers spending pattern will change etc. An overwhelming majority of companies respond to this by controlling the costs. So understanding the benefits of the products and services offered to the customers over the value in the market defines a company’s value proposition in market.

3. Operational Alignment

After identifying how the company adds value to the customers, they need to evaluate the current operations to ensure that they are in line with the market strategy. Analyse how the core processes, staffing, organisational culture and systems contribute to the value that the company wishes to provide to its customers. Every process, person, other assets and technology adds to the customer experience and should be in line to generate more value. This can be in the form of more sales oriented calls, target marketing, better customer services etc. which helps the customers to get what they are expecting. It is very important to always remember recession means doing better not doing less.

3.3. Strategies for Growth and Recovery during Recession

As a hibernating bears is proof of nature’s adaptive responses to very harsh environment there are many other situations where the way of responding to the circumstances is different. According to Reeves and Diemler (2009) to gain a competitive edge during the downturn the nature offers four broad alternatives namely, behavioural, social, reproductive and evolutionary strategies.

3.3.1. Behavioural Strategies

Majority of the animals adapt to the changes in environment by changing their behaviour. When the vital food stuffs starts declining they change their diet and change their hunting strategies. Businesses can also use a wide variety of behavioural strategies. They are:

a. Changing the customer offering:  Reeves and Diemler (2009) suggests that this is all about changing what the businesses hunt for. Think about new services that can enhance the value proposition for customers who are striving hard to survive with mean income. Introducing new sizes that make product appearance to be of good value in a recessionary situation. Otherwise reducing the base product features is another good idea. During the recession in 1989-1992 U-Haul, the North American truck rental business was facing competition due to hiked prices. The entire consumers were cost conscious and there was little or no room for differentiating based on capital or service improvement. In this critical situation U-Haul faced the competition by offering very low rental charges. They also found adjacent market sale with high profit add-ons such as tape, wine, cardboard boxes and other packing items. This broader offering helped U-Haul to achieve a profit leadership of ten percent operating margin when compared with an industry average of only three percent.

 In the early 1990’s, BAA, an UK based airport management company, faced a tough recession situation in its domestic market. It also faced a strategic challenge from the regulatory shift. This lead to the fear that the company would collapse its duty free shopping business at Heathrow and other airports as the custom barriers within the EU zone was lifted in 1999. Instead of reducing, BAA increased its retail space by fifty percent and shifted its retail mix nearer to branded luxury boutiques. These moves were a real success. The retail revenues o the company grew almost eighteen percent between 1998 and 1999 with the same customer base, thus providing the company good path to grow.

b. Exploring new Pricing strategies: Contracting and pricing proves to be the powerful ways by which a company can change its business. The hunting strategies are changed in this way. Reeves and Diemler (2009) further states that companies seek out whether there are any options to reduce uncertainty through long term contracts or to lower the customers’ risk by following outcome based pricing strategy. During the 1980’s Rolls-Royce and General Electric changed the way the sold the aircraft engines. They adopted the strategy of selling the engines power by hour rather than separately selling engines plus maintenance plus finance plus spare parts. Airlines paid based on their planes utilization. This helped Rolls-Royce and GE to win the share in the engine market and they could increase the revenue per client and could extract good premiums and fair margins at the same time.

c. Reaching out New Markets and Exiting Old Ones: This is solely about taking decisions on the location to hunt. Looking out for areas where there are opportunities for growth and development. The companies should seek the best ways to change business operations so as to meet up with the changing consumer demands. The recession of 1990’s had a major impact on luxury car makers. In 1996 Porsche introduced the new Boxster series to return back to growth. It was a great success and helped the company to gain a forty six percent growth in revenues between 1996 1nd 1997.

d. Opportunistic moves to boost competitive advantage: This strategy is all about sharpening predatory skills. Capturing customers from competitor is the main tactic here. This also involves capturing the scare assets like talented staffs, brands, intellectual properties from the competitors. Arrow Electronic, an US based distributor electronics to makers of equipment’s saw a slump in the equipment business in 1980’s and saw this as an opportunity to seize the leadership in the industry. Even though Arrow was a number two company it was half the size of its competitor. In 1988 they started buying and integrating their smaller competitors. By the time when the economy reached a boom Arrow became the market share leader.  The operating income of the company increased between 1991 and 1994 to a rate of ninety six percent per year due to its expanded scale and supply power.

3.3.2. Social Strategies

Animals thrive in challenging environment by cooperating together with symbiotic relationships. In the same way, companies can also develop and deploy social strategies to cope up with recession. Some examples are:

a. Developing partnerships with customers or suppliers: Checking out ways to work together to reduce or remove transaction costs, inventory from the system for mutual benefits is a good strategy here.

b. Developing partnerships with competitors: Downturn offers enough opportunities for competitors in same industrial sector to come together. They can share the services, assets and even capabilities. This can greatly help in reducing costs and growing up easily in the market.

c. Reshaping the Environment: There exists opportunities to argue for likable changes to regulatory managements.

Reeves and Diemler (2009) states two cases of partnering strategies:

Response of Airlines to the threat of internet distribution: In the late 1990’s dot com travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity generated tremendous amount of risk to the profitability of airlines. Having recently gained good control over travel agency commissions, the airlines found a more concentrated medium with the prospect of demanding more fares. The threat resulted in a collective response: Five of the major US Airlines namely American, Continental, United, Delta and Northwest joined together to create Orbitz. It was launched in June 2001 and offered the best available fares thus using the technology for a breakthrough in a consumer friendly and clear interface. The Airlines were pleased due to two reasons. First, they met the customer’s desire for one stop shopping at reduced price with secure and reasonable online distribution costs. Second, they could earn a decent return of about dollar one twenty five million equity investment. This was through an IPO in 2003.  Later in 2004 Cendant Corporation purchased Orbitz for dollar 1.25 million.

Technological company’s collaboration on Enterprise Linux: During the 1990’s majority of the software and hardware companies had to incur costs in certifying and testing their enterprise products for different variants of the UNIX operating system. This is because the competitive rivalry prevented the vendor’s of UNIX from becoming the defacto standard. The diplomatic tactics of Red Hat along with the coalition of companies like IBM, Dell, Oracle, Hewlett Packard and Veritas led to the becoming of the Red Hat version of Linux to be the standard for Enterprise Linux. Further, the cost of all these companies got reduced and the market for Linux grew significantly-benefitting all.

3.3.3. Reproductive Strategies:

According to Giles (2008) in nature, two of the reproductive strategies confer competitive advantage: on is survival through the quantity of offspring and the other one is through the nurture and quality of offspring. In business, many firms use the rapid expansion of franchising activities during the difficult times. This is to ensure rapid growth by leaving small capital at risk. An UK based retailer called The Body Shop followed the quality approach to the recession in 1998-2000. This involved buying back all the franchisees and investing in store renovation and new goods. However, this helped in refocusing the image of the brand in the consumers mind at higher quality. These investments helped the company to get a double digit return on growth. According to Reeves and Diemler (2009) the basic strategies include:

a. Rapid Prototyping: These business models can be quickly mocked and tested with customers.

b. Incubation: Few high investments can help in gaining competitive advantage in the future. The companies need to be protected and fostered during the incubation period when the whole investments are abridged.

An UK based conglomerate, Virgin has launched its branches to over 360 different countries and has got leaderships across diverse range of industrial sectors. The second largest airline in UK market is Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Money is a financial service business that has more than quarter a million customers within three months of its launch in 1995.  This group as a whole focussed on embracing risk and innovation for growth during recession.

3.3.4. Evolutionary Strategies:

As the environment changes so radically the only way to survive is to evolve into another form. Evolutionary strategies help businesses to run into more innovative models. Intel’s transformation into chip manufacturer from a commodity manufacturer is a vital one. IBM has also transformed from a product company to a service company. Short term survival strategies like cost reduction should be undertaken very carefully. It is quite essential to distinguish between what is strategic and what remains superfluous. Without survival there are no possibilities of gaining a sustainable competitive advantage.

a. Resilience: Even after the recovery from a recession, volatility and uncertainty will remain as its features. So resilience, the ability to anticipate and adjust to strategic changes will be very critical to gain competitive advantage in the future. Some of the challenges most of the senior managers of the companies will have to face in future are:

• The rise and growth of developing countries like India and China.
• The growth and development of information technology.
• Concerns on changes in climate and issues on sustainability.
• The political tensions and risks across various countries around the globe.

Companies can no longer look on market share to ensure that profitability can be gained in future. Resilience helps a company to better navigate and face hard challenges. A company that is resilient finds risks and opportunities very clearly and responds to them rapidly and effectively. Organizations of that type will have characteristics like:

b. Foresight: This involves actively monitoring the trends and events that could create opportunities and risks. Executives views the trends and trigger events that may require actions. They further prepare for strategic actions to alleviate risks and to utilize most of the opportunities. Critical trends can be easily identified by staying connected with society and looking well beyond the industry. In 2002, the US based transportation and Logistics Company named United Parcel Service conducted a long term planning exercise. This exercise was repeated to identify prospective changes in its vision and strategies. This process has greatly helped UPS to take advantage of growth of internet and industry consolidation.

c. Agility: Companies must have the willingness and ability to adapt to disruptive events rapidly. In most cases, they can make conditional moves to trigger events.

d. Flexibility: Companies needs to have the staying power and resources like financial and human to survive unexpected condition. Having flexibility helps the company to react decisively to surprise situations and is very important with regards to strategic resilience.

e. Entrepreneurialism: Companies survive difficult times by scaling and optimising existing models of business. In changing times they survive by designing, scaling and exploring new models of business. These innovations need processes and capabilities that are unique from the product development in the stable market. It also requires the readiness to invest more in innovations.

f. Diversity: A company’s ability to adjust to unknown future depends on the diversity perspective’s it can bear. It depends on the diversity of culture and employees. The ability of the company to maintain and foster that diversity at the time of recession is one the determinant of its future resilience.

g. Shaping to Competitive Environment: Companies that are resilient survive uncertainty by shaping standards, regulations and the structure of industries. US airlines had a tragic impact after the September 11 incident. They survived with the help of cash relief and loan guarantees from the government. Moreover, long term dialogues with regulators aided in lowering the taxes.

3.3.5. Marketing Strategies during Recession

According to Samuelson (2008) it is quite possible for any company to survive the strong turbulence caused by economic downturns by developing an effective value based marketing plan. Value based marketing can be defined as meeting the needs and wants of the customers with as much value as possible so as to preserve the loyalty of customers. With the help of such loyal customers, a company can manage any difficult economic conditions. But this is not at all an easy task as recession can bring in many impacts like unstable and erratic customer wants and needs. So every marketer requires a strong marketing strategy to help their companies to go ahead of market changes, thus enabling them to survive and prosper.

 Effective Marketing Strategies

According to Keller (2008) determining how to price a particular product is the toughest decision that a management have to make. If the price of the product is very high, then there are chances for the company to lose out in competition. But if the price is too low, then they are in danger of leaving money on the customers table. This situation will denigrate the product by placing it behind all the similar products available in the market. Moreover, it is highly risky for a company to lower or raise the price without evaluating demand elasticity with price. Elasticity is one of the most vital indicators of competitive advantage or monopolistic strength of a company, brand or product.

Keller (2008) suggests that the following need factors need to be taken into consideration while evaluating the price elasticity of demand.

Market is in perfect or imperfect competition: In a normal sense, the elasticity of demand for industry based products is low in cases when the market is in imperfect competition. Here if the company try to increase or decrease the price, there will be no substantial change in demand as the product is essential regardless of change in price.

Importance of industrial products: The demand turns to be inelastic for products when the customer feels that company or the brand has close substitutes, and for those products that are needed in urgency. The figure below shows the different types of products drawn in the form of a matrix with regards to quantities purchased and premeditated importance. Kevin (2009) suggests that the elasticity of demand changes based on different product groups, but the demand remains more elastic on the right hand side of the matrix, where huge quantities of products are bought by customers. As a result the demand elasticity is probable to be remain high for products that are taken as granted and is likely to be much more higher for products that are classified as unavoidable ones and have substantial importance. If the prices of products at the top left corner of the matrix are reduced, then company could devaluate the value of the brand. However, if the prices are reduced for least important products like paper clips, the company can’t increase sales as those products are bought by customers only when they are in need. Hence, the products that fall into the right hand side of the matrix have got an advantage as the pricing strategy works best for them.

a. Inertia: according to Roth (2008) there is a big inertia amidst industrial buyers. It is really easy to carry on ties with the same suppliers rather than frequently changing suppliers. When the price increases, many buyers in the market will tie up with same suppliers unless the difference in price moves beyond fifteen percent of that of a competitor. At times of deductions in price, demand is almost inelastic as customers are highly unlikely to increase their buying in spite of lower prices. So in conclusion inertia is a vital factor that influence the elasticity theory and should be given due consideration while defining strategies to cope up with recession. In highly volatile markets the price elasticity in demand will be too high and it will be too challenging to decide on prices as they vary rapidly and remain under careful observation. Some methods to select a suitable pricing strategy is discussed in the following paragraphs.

b. Reducing Prices

Majority of the companies reduce the prices so as to increase sales and to compete with their rivals who are also lowering prices. It is very important to lower the price without affecting the margin. In fact it is not possible to run in profit in the long term, if the prices are lowered without considering the profit margin. So, lowering prices is one of the most best and effective strategy when the customers are highly sensitive to price. Sometimes, customers won’t respond to reduced prices because when the entire suppliers reduce the price there won’t be much difference. Keller (2008) states that one of the best ways to seek effects on margin is by adjusting the product offered to the lowered price. Theories suggest that it is always better to unbundle all the features of a package so that each feature is stripped apart and the company can focus on their core offerings to the customer thus helping the customers with some specific part of the product which they require. Lowering prices is one of the short term strategies to cope with recession. The case is same with marginal pricing where the product prices are set above average variable cost and below the average total cost. This strategy is not sustainable in the long run. In the same way discounts are much common in consumer markets and can be really successful in increasing sales.

c. Increasing Prices

In Keller’s (2008) point of view the cash flow of companies can be increased by raising prices, but if it is not properly disciplined without a long term pricing strategy, the revenue generated through sales can dry up and can cause fatal consequences. Managers need to analyse and understand the price sensitivity of the market and then have a feel of how much they can change price to generate more revenue and more profits without generating antagonistic impacts. The substantial inertia that exists in consumer markets gives more opportunities to increase price as the customers are highly unlikely to change suppliers due to high prices. Raising prices to the optimal level can help in increasing the flow of cash as long as the loss in volume is overcomed by rise in more profits per unit. If the management doesn’t know the price elasticity of demand for their goods, they will be missing track to increase the profits. Many firms provide unnecessary services that are normally not appreciated or acknowledged by customers or in turn the customers are not paying for them. Some examples include delivery, fulfilling late orders and payments etc. However, more revenue can be generated by obtaining high margins through restructuring the product, charging for special orders etc.

d. Price Presentation

Keller (2008) further analyses that during recession, customers are too particular that they need an assurance that they are getting value for their money and at the same time the companies need to look out for new ways to make their products more attractive. The powerful argument to support hike in prices is by communicating the return on investment on goods where firms can show customers how their goods can save the customers money. General Electric has initiated a programme that markets and develops environment friendly goods that are really pleasing the market, not only as they are green, but also as they help their customers to lower the operational costs.

Clarity in pricing is not so essential in retail industry. Customers like to see what they are paying for and see the goods priced separately. By presenting a breakdown of prices to customers, the value for money in terms of product offering can easily be highlighted. Above all companies need to adjust the pricing and payment terms, so as to accommodate the needs of customers who are also facing the impacts of recession. Some other pricing options like up-front payments can attract some customers and can help in retaining existing customers.

In a recession, managers focus more on thriving threats and usually lose the vision of capturing golden opportunities. It is quite necessary that mangers have to admit that it is possible to control the impacts of recession by looking out for opportunities and reducing threats.

3.4. Strategy shift Analysis

        According to Richardson (2009) companies can be grouped into four different categories based on the change in strategy they adopt to survive recession. They are namely:

1. Prevention focused firms: They had cut backs even more than their competitors but hadn’t increased the expenditures more than their competitor’s had.
2. Promotion focused firms: These firms have increased their expenditure but haven’t increased it more than their competitor’s.
3. Pragmatic firms: They adopted prevention focus as well by reducing the man power more than their rivals but made more expenses for sales promotion.
4. Progressive firms: These types of firms didn’t reduce the employees when comparing with competitor’s but allocated more resources than their art rivals for marketing.

3.5. Position for Recovery

After a short time, it is normally expected that the economy will bounce back to a booming period. According to Graham (2009) the effects of recession and time required for recovery will depend on the characteristics and dependency of each company. The winners of recession will be those companies who meet the two fold challenge of surviving the recession and at the same time prepare for recovery. Such companies stabilizes themselves by strengthening their business areas, meet the customer expectations, remakes the brands, penetrates into new market areas and finally gaining a good catch over the market during and after the tough times.

Graham (2010) further comments that once a business adapts itself by managing a tough economic cycle, in future it will be easy for the company to prepare in advance when a shift arises. This becomes a regular part of planning business, market and operational strategy for controlling the recession and needs to be implemented early during the recession to avoid major loses. When the economy rebounds, it is very important to understand the post-recession paradigm shift which has changed the markets. This needs paying attention to trends in the industry, learning the expectations of the customers after recession, re-evaluating the competitive strategies to cover up gaps and opportunities, capturing customers of competitors whose loyalties was changed due to recession and by seeking new alliances, joint ventures and partnerships to give a faster response to changing market.

On the other hand according to Peter (2006) the operational goal is to improve and build production and delivery functions as the economic situation recovers slowly. Finally the products have to be moved over the sales channel so as to meet the demand. This requires careful matching of operations and services meeting up the expectations of the customers, monitoring, tracking and developing the competencies of the company so as to improve their capacity to deliver and compete, focus more on retaining the employee as the market picks up competitive benefits and pay, supervision, flexible schedules and involvement of employees, delivering good customer oriented service, Keen attention to quality, technologies, test and commercializing ideas.

3.6. Comparative Analysis of Various Competitive Strategies

CHAPTER-IV

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

4.1. Conclusions

There is no suspicion that the economy is going through extremely bad times. Even though two third of the financial directors assume that it will get worse soon, an intelligent person can identify as many possibilities as complications during the tough times. Each company should take care that every penny of the budget is spent wisely. A recession is indeed an awful thing to waste. Scott Anthony in his book The Great Disruption calls this period as “Accelerated Darwinism” or “Survival of the fittest sped up”. The market and operational strategies focuses on constructing value for customers, investing very wisely during recession and prepare for an unavoidable rebound in the economy to make the organization fit enough to survive well in the future. Companies that survive recession are favoured with future advantages. They will have growth opportunities in all shapes and sizes and will have the capability to shift seamlessly to action. Fostering resilience is organizational not analytical. Companies should prefer skill building, leadership and cultural changes so as to become resilient. The seriousness and immediate nature of economic downturn can be used as a catalyst for change as most of the employees understand business. This study examined the impact of competitive strategies on performance of companies during economic recession. However, the application these strategies vary from industry to industry and location to location. A single strategy is not enough to help out the company during the tough times. Therefore, a combination of various strategies discussed in the report is common adopted by most of the retail companies. The common strategies will help the companies to retain their market share and customer, but will never help out in expanding their market. Most of the market giants views recessions as an opportunity to increase their customer base and capture the market. Strategies like differentiating the product and service offerings, using new technologies to stay connect with customers and staying close to customers are quite successful in meeting the both ends during recession. However, to gain a competitive edge over the rivals several other strategies for growth needs to be adopted.

The growth and recovery strategies focus more on changing the products and services offered to the customers, altering prices in favour of customer’s and making opportunistic moves to grab a competitive edge. Maintaining a good partnership with competitors, suppliers and consumers can help a lot in surviving over the recession. It is during the recession time that all the major competitors come together and thinks of ways to staying in the market. Evolutionary strategies like foresight and flexibility could greatly help in adapting to the environment. Scanning the market frequently will help in assessing and analysing the trends towards which the market moves. This information can be used to change the policies of the company and adopt a new one that is more suitable to the economic condition. One of the most important strategy that most of the companies forget during recession is the marketing strategy. Due to shortage of funds it is more likely that most of the companies will reduce their expense on marketing. But marketing during the downturn is very important as it helps a lot in capture more market share and easy recovery. This is because, as most of the firm’s cuts its marketing budgets, they will be leastly involved with sales promotion. Whilst, this generates tremendous opportunities for a good marketer to make effective utilization of budget and make campaigns. An example worth mentioning here is Microsoft’s marketing done during the recession in 1998. Microsoft was worstly hit by the recession in 1998-2000, but they never reduced their marketing budgets during the tough time, which helped the company to sweep away all its competitors from the market immediately after the recovery. Hence, marketing strategies are very important and essential for faster recovery and capturing the market.

There are many limitations for this study. First of all, the present study evaluates only one industrial sector that is the strategies that a retailer can adopt to survive recession. The results of this study cannot be generalized for other industrial sectors. Therefore, future studies on competitive strategies can use this as a framework but need to use a large industrial sector size to validate results. At the same time, a cross country study can also be of good one in future. This is owing to the varying effect of global economic recession in different countries. The study greatly helped in analysing various competitive strategies and understanding which one has to be applied in each circumstance.

4.2. Recommendations

        Even though recession is a terrible waste, it doesn’t always mean that cutting budgets is the only way to survive in recession. Cost cutting is one of the most unsuccessful strategies to be adopted if it is used as sole solution to recession. Cutting costs and unnecessary expenditures are vital to ensure cash reserve for the company but it should be done in way that it will never affect the growth and recovery of the firm.

The study focussed on analysing and understanding various competitive strategies that can be adopted during the recession period. There are several strategies available and many of them can be applied for a single situation. However, most of the companies always prefer for implementing a combination of strategies that is best suited to the environment. Few of the most commonly adopted strategies include the social, marketing and general strategies. It is always good for firms to establish good partnerships with its competitors during recession. A mutual understanding or a symbiotic relationship can really help both the firms to survive the recession. This is what the airline industry in US did immediately after the 2001 terrorist attack. In fact, this give and take policy helped all the airline companies to survive the impacts of 9/11.

Marketing strategies are also very vital for firms to ensure speedy recovery from recession. Strategies like offering more quality of service to customers, differentiating product offerings, reducing the prices, providing more discounts etc. are good and helpful in retaining existing customers. Moreover companies should foresee this as an opportunity to grab the market with effective marketing campaigns. It is not wise to cut the marketing budget during the recession. A good and effective marketing plan can help the firms to grab the market share of its competitors and make a speedy recovery. At the same time, price presentation is one of the best ways to convince the customer about the product price and services offered. A list showing the breakdown of prices is one of the best strategies in marketing the product. This is commonly adopted by most of the firms to persuade the customers and win their loyalty toward the company brand. Even though entering new market domains during recession period are predicted to be risky the success stories many companies like the Virgin Group is a good motivation to venture out into new domains during downturn. There are certain tactics that both the consumers and retailers have to keep in mind during recession. They are:

Consumer Tactics

1. Consumers have less money to spend, but the retailers want the consumer’s money more than any period in the history. So the best option is to look around for best prices, services and environment.
2. Choose to spend the money with whom the customer would most like to continue.
3. Always be reasonable about travelling for shopping.
4. Limit the usage of credit cards

Retailer Tactics

1. Spending money unnecessarily on inventories with debt that are offered for sale at reduced prices can’t help in making money in the long term.
2. Customers must be offered low priced substitutes in the store.
3. Getting more people in store is the key to developing ever lasting relationships and retaining business. Even though same profits per item are not made during recession, retailer can make sales and meet new customers.
4. Don’t think that raising prices will help in increasing revenues. The price elasticity of the products should be carefully taken into consideration. However, the prices of highly elastic goods should not be raised as it will lower the quantity demanded.
5. Always keep a check on inventory. This involves maintaining a record of products sold. Keen attention should be given to the competitors and their prices.
6. Altering the store layout can add up good appeal with no expense and can attract more customers during the recession period.
7. It is always necessary to make tough choices and sacrifices during recession.
8. Listening to the customer’s is very important as they are always the greatest asset.

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Reflective Report

Introduction

        The key aspects of the dissertation report revolved around researching, analysing and reviewing the important competitive strategies that can help a company to survive the toughest impacts of recession. After the initial orientation for the dissertation in the month of June a structured schedule was formulated to accomplish various tasks relating to the writing of report for dissertation. A phase by phase approach was followed and a systematic review was undertaken at the end of each phase. The process started by understanding the key concepts of competition and analysing various competitive strategies in a normal market. This helped a lot in understanding and scrutinizing strategies of different kinds and the situation for which each is applicable. Information was collected on the current economic condition. The current status of the economy is on the verge of another big economic slowdown due to the euro zone crisis. These analyses aided a lot in understanding and investigating the key issues behind recession and the solution the companies can adopt to solve them. However, the process of setting up a group for the dissertation was quite helpful in sharing key resources and information. Discussions on various competitive strategies were generated often and the conclusions derived from them formed the key features of the study.

Group dynamics played a very important role in this study as there were cooperative efforts from many sides in formulating and researching about the problem. Every person in the group was allotted a specific area to research upon and discuss the major learning’s from the research. These discussions were fruitful in understanding and exploring the various competitive strategies that are normally adopted by companies during the tough times of recession. Retail industry was the main area of focus for study for all the members in the group. One of the main reason for choosing this industry is that because, it is one the industry that is usually worst hit by the recession. 35 percent of the total working class in most of countries are employed by retail companies. Retail companies were worst hit during the recession in 1998-2000 and 2007-2008. Moreover, a careful study of various case studies on companies hit by recession was done so as to derive learning lessons from them. The strategies adopted by those companies were helpful in classifying and comparing the survival strategies during recession.

Recollection of Experiences

        All the members of the group maintained a diary to pen down the areas they are covering while doing the literature review. Initially, it was planned to focus more on secondary research rather than a primary research. In secondary research information were collected from diverse source like books, journals, articles, online publications, video and audio files. They are called secondary resources as they are already prepared by a previous researcher. Most of the secondary resources collected were based on a primary research conducted with a certain sample size.  Primary researches are totally based on questionnaires, face to face interviews and are designed to collect data for statistical analysis and there by deriving conclusions from them. The digital library facility was effectively and efficiently utilized to gather research materials.

 An initial review was done to understand the concept of competition in a normal booming market. The strategies the companies adopted in a normal market and analysed carefully to identify the changes in strategies during a boom and recession. It was found that the strategies keeps on changing based on the economic climate. The experience of every person while reviewing on the concept of competition was discussed to create an idea about competition. Next, the strategic difference in competition during a boom and recession was analysed to generate conclusion. This was followed by a thorough literature review on the various competitive strategies adopted by companies during recession. Every person in the group explored new strategies each day. This added up knowledge about competitive strategies. Initially all the common strategies like Visibility, differentiate, we are with you etc. came as an agenda for the group to discuss. The advantages and disadvantages of each such measure were carefully discussed. After the discussion on common strategies, more focus was given on case study based articles. This really helped in identifying new strategies adopted by different companies around the globe. An example of it is the market penetration strategy followed by the virgin group during the 2001-2002 recession.

        New strategies of business optimization like operation and market realignment and adaption to environment were identified on rigorous research. These strategies were quite commonly adopted by the multi-national giants to survive recession. Other vital strategies of growth and recovery were identified by the different member of the group. The growth and recovery strategies were more related to the survival strategies adopted by animals during extremely odd climate. These strategies were further interconnected by the author with the strategies adopted by companies during recession. Many new strategies like behavioural, evolutionary, reproductive, marketing and social strategies were identified and evaluated. Every person in the group participated in the discussion on these strategies. Various case studies portraying the success stories of these strategies were also carefully considered while preparing the recommendations.

        However, in spite of all these success stories there aroused few crisis situations when information on certain strategies couldn’t be collected due to lack of resources. Strategies of evolutionary type are rarely adopted by companies. But through focussed and rigorous research, information was collected from journal and articles. New strategies were added on to discussions every day. The advantages and disadvantages of each such strategy were carefully evaluated while preparing the literature review. Concepts like resilience, inertia, agility, entrepreneurism etc. were new to all and so it very difficult for everyone to grasp. Further, strenuous efforts were required to research on them and understand the base meaning of those strategies during recession.

        There were many occasions of enlightenments, when information difficult to comprehend was collected. This led many of us into further researches on understanding the concepts explained in the article. It was extremely a joyous and peaceful experience when discussing the dissertation areas with group members. Brain storming sessions helped everyone in the group to utilize their capabilities to the fullest degree. New ideas were generated and discussed to reach excellent conclusions. Moreover strategies for recovery were also carefully studied to identify the best way for a speedy recovery from recession. A strategy shift analysis was also done to explore how different companies shift their strategies during recession. It is based on this information the firms were grouped into four different categories namely: promotion focussed, prevention focussed, pragmatic and progressive.

Personal Feelings and Learning from Experience

        The entire process of research was a cooperative endeavour from all the group members. It is in fact extremely good to say that all the group members contributed to their part well. There existed a good coordination and personal attachment among the group members which led to the success of this joint venture. I personally could contribute to many aspects of research work. Important concepts like competition and strategies were defined by me while starting the work. The aims and objectives were formulated initially so as to focus within a specific business area. Many assumptions were taken to limit the study within the retail industry. This is because the competitive strategies vary from location to location and industry to industry. Researching on key strategies like marketing and evolutionary was quite motivating as new concepts and terminologies could be learned. The entire process of researching was a learning phase as most of the concepts were quite new to all in the group. Lack of resources while reaching half way through the process was a stumbling block to all of us. But the methodical and innovative approaches we took helped a lot in overcoming difficulties encountered in that phase.

        At times, the absence of some group members during brain storming sessions significantly affected the research and discussion process. But however, better contributions from rest of the team member cracked the issues and helped a lot in solving concerns. A log of team meetings was kept and the minutes of each meeting was recorded. This contained the information on subject of discussion and the contribution made by each member. The procedural approach we followed aided us in keeping track of the work and managing the time effectively. Time management was very critical for us, as many issues in recession had to be discussed. A group meeting was organized every week for this purpose. I personally feel fully contented with the contributions I have made to the group. More aspects like how to interact in a group and taking initiatives voluntarily were achieved through the process. However the entire process would have taken a better route if the work was individually assigned to each member.  On many occasions it was extremely difficult to play down the differences among the team members. Problems that were addressed in a team meeting were given a period one week to get settled. That means in the next meeting a similar discussion of the problem was conducted and solutions were designed based on the research material collected by the group members. Problems were discussed on both faces so that both the positive and negatives aspects were taken into consideration. This really helped every team member to contribute to the discussion and make it livelier.

        A systematic and organized approach was followed to gather the research materials. Initially information was collected from library journals and articles to understand the concepts. This was followed by a vigorous search for more vital data from online resources. The digital library was effectively utilized by all the team members for this purpose. When I had to face issues in gathering research materials, an energetic and enthusiastic push was done by me to put in more efforts and look out for other options than the internet. This approach however helped me a lot in crossing barriers that came my way. Information and articles collected were shared among the group members for better knowledge and understanding. On the other hand a similar kind of sharing and determination were not placed in by most of the group members. This has truly affected the performance of at least few of the group members. Their motivation level was reduced. In spite of all this, the group effort remained unique and almost all the members got benefitted from that.

        To summarize, individual contributions are very crucial for group works, but it should not result in few being getting benefitted out of the work. Contributions from every member should be ensured.

Group Dynamics

My group had six members coming from the marketing background. When the topic was given we all had an initial discussion towards formulating the problem and designing the aims and objectives of the problem. Later, the group decided to put good focus on retail industry as it is the one which is usually worst hit by recession. We initially planned to organize team meetings every week to discuss various problems that we come across and to solve them in time. In the second meeting we analysed the concepts of competition based on the materials researched by everyone. All the members contributed effectively to this. This session helped us in giving a foundation to carry on with literature review.  Later on several sessions were conducted to discuss information collected as a part of literature review. An initial focus was placed by everyone to identify the common strategies adopted by retailers during recession. This resulted in identifying few basic strategies like visibility, staying with customers, reducing prices etc. These strategies were discussed profoundly to define and understand the more complex strategies to come.  In further sessions strategies like revolutionary, behavioural, reproductive and social were discussed. Brain storming methodology was commonly used by us to generate ideas on each topic. However we had debates on both positive and negative aspects of each strategy. All these idea generation methodologies helped our team in understanding these strategies very well. But some of the team members were quite inactive throughout the sessions which reduced the morale for few group members. A lack of proper leadership was clearly noted in the group. Even though initiatives were voluntarily taken by group member we lacked a good program manager. During discussions every team member considered the inputs given by other members as vital and gave due consideration. This made the discussions more fruitful and generated a feeling of satisfaction in the minds of the members. On the other hand I expected that all the team members will contribute equally for the work. But contradictorily that didn’t happen and this generated a lot of surprise in me. In a group activity, every member is bound to equally contribute to the work as per my principle.

Moreover effective group management techniques like task allocation, Gantt chart and minutes recording was undertaken by me. Tasks were allocated to each team member over a week period during the team meetings, and these tasks were discussed and evaluated in the subsequent meeting next week. This structured methodology helped a lot in solving many issues within the group. Gantt chart was used to properly track the task allocated to each member and to ensure that they complete it in time. Gantt chart records both task and time in a graphical manner and is easy to understand. Minutes of the meeting was regularly prepared and maintained and it helped a lot in preparing the reflective report. It contains the date of the meeting, number of persons attended, task accomplished by each person, issues discussed and conclusions reached. All these project management tools were really effective and helpful in managing the group activity as a whole. We could have identified more tools for researching information on competitive strategies. Even though the digital library was effectively utilized, the extent to which every other team member is very low. Internet search engines like Google, Bing. Google scholar, yahoo etc. were commonly used by some team members even though other resources were available in plenty with vital information.

Lessons for future projects

The entire process of this research work was a good learning experience for me which I could cherish all my life time. Many key concepts like time management, group interaction, problem solving, researching and leadership skills were learned during the process.

1. Time Management: Time management is very vital with any work so as to deliver it in time. Many new ways of managing time were learned through this piece of work. Scheduling of research work and time was done to ensure that they are completed in time without rushing in the last moment. Time slots were allotted to all the phases of research work like designing the aims and objectives, reviewing the literature, while making comparative analysis and for generating conclusions and recommendations.
2. Group Interaction: Many new ways of interacting in a group were learned through this process. How to deal with people with different behaviour and how get expected results from team members were some key aspects that I could learn. Communicating in a group was an area where I had to improve. In fact I got tremendous opportunities for this through this group work.
3. Problem Solving: solves issues that creep in in a group activity is really difficult. This is because there are number of persons involved in it. Many strategies to solving problems like empathy, discussion and debate were learned by this process.
4. Researching: Many stumbling blocks were faced while researching for vital information. Information can not only be gained from internet, but there are vast numbers of other resources for that. The digital library was effectively put into use to gather information required.
5. Leadership: One of the most important area where I was expecting some change was this skill. I could enhance my leadership skills and in the meantime help the group to go forward cooperatively without much tensions and fears. Project management tools were effectively used for this purpose. Even though the group lacked a good program manager, I could demonstrate few qualities of good leadership in group activity by coordinating various ideas generation sessions.

All the above lessons are really helpful for future projects and will greatly aid in enhancing my expertise and knowledge.

Conclusion

        The entire stage of this dissertation work was a learning phase for me as many new concepts and strategies were learned. Collecting information from various secondary sources and assimilating them according to the requirements was the most tedious task of all. However, the group effort from all the team members eased this activity a lot. Time management was another crucial area where a great degree of improvement was gained. All the tasks that were allotted in the group were finished in time. Moreover, I could effectively contribute the group discussions and add my ideas to the work. A great deal of motivation was obtained from few of my group members which improved my morale a lot. I could develop and enhance my leadership skills through the group interaction activity. A systematic approach was used to solve problems that came up while doing the dissertation work. Even though there were quite a few flaws in the group activity, looking at the work after completion gives me great joy. Overall, this work gives me a great deal of personal satisfaction and happiness that I could cherish for a long time.