Marketing strategy’s a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. A marketing strategy should be centered on the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal. Having a competitive advantage is necessary for a firm to compete in the market . But what is more important is whether the competitive advantage is sustainable . A firm must identify its position relative to the competition in the market . By knowing if it is a leader, challenger, follower or nicher, it can adopt appropriate strategies to compete To discuss these four competitive strategies I am to pick an industry and that is Data storage device industry. A data storage device is a device for recording (storing) information (data). A storage device may hold information, process information, or both. There are different types of companies who provide data storage facility. The most prominent of today’s companies are EMC Corporation NetApp, Inc. Western Digital Seagate Technology Brocade Communications Systems, Hitachi Samsung etc EMC, NetApp, Brocade Communications Systems are specially concerned with larger business firms, server data warehouses whereas Seagate, WD, Hitachi, & Samsung are known better for Pc Data solution Especially Hard drives whether internal, external, passport size, solid state or larger server capacity hard drives. My main focus is on PC data solution so we will be discussing About Western digital, Seagate, Hitachi, and Samsung. Market Leader strategy Why should one strive To Become a Market Leader? It's better to be the first than it is to be better. Being first in any category is going to give you the edge – being the leader comes from being first. It's much easier to get into the mind of consumers first than try to convince people you have a better product or service than the one that did get there first. Improvements are always made to product/service inventions and innovations but the first in has a head start. Once you are the leader, a position mostly gained by being first, it is pretty hard for competitors to dislodge you, as long as you keep your products up to date and of comparable quality. Further, the first in to the market has the opportunity to have its brand name adopted as the generic category name. Once you are first and get the consumers to buy your brand, often they won't bother to switch. People tend to stick with what they've got. It is difficult to differentiate between Seagate & WD that who is leader and who is challenger but here is a short analysis of both. Seagate Technology is the world's largest hard drives and storage solutions manufacturer. Incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology Seagate invented the first Hard disk in 1980 and become the market leader. It has 31 years of innovation and had been a market leader for a long period of time till 21st century. Seagate introduced its first hard disk in 1980 that has a capacity of 5MB that increased to GBs & through innovation and defending its market now Seagate has introduced 3000GB or 3TByte Hard disk. Seagate for the first time introduced 3Tb external hard drive Free agent GOFleX. Seagate explains: “with 3TB of capacity people can store up to 120 HD movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or countless hours of digital music.” For a very long time, Seagate led the hard disk drive market in both the areas of total shipments and revenues There were lots of manufactures that was competing Seagate that in include HP, Maxtor, Quantum etc but they disappeared, merged, or switched to another segments or business Seagate offers products and services for home, business, and enterprises. Over a large span of time Seagate increased & Expand the total market by . Finding new users . Creating new uses, and . Encouraging more usage Protect its current market share Increase its market share In 1980, Seagate Technology introduced the first hard disk drive for microcomputers, the ST506. It was a full height (twice as high as most current 5 1/4" drives) 5 1/4" drive, with a stepper motor, and held 5 Mbytes. In 1997 Seagate introduced the first 7,200 RPM, Ultra ATA hard disk drive for desktop computers and in February of this year they introduced the first 15,000 RPM hard disk drive, the Cheetah X15. Milestones for IDE DMA, ATA/33, and ATA/66 drives follow: Total market capital of Seagate is 6.7 Billion dollar which is ranked 4TH all over the world in data storage devices. Seagate products include verity of product from a single user to huge enterprises. It manufactures internal & external hard drives, home entertainment, network storage, accessories, for laptop, desktop, and consumer electronics accessories. Hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers are repositioning themselves in this Great Recession, which will impact market share leadership. Market – challenger strategies Many market challengers have gained ground or even overtaken the leader. A market challenger is a firm competing aggressively in order to extend market share. Western Digital a fast growing, multinational, and challenging copany had emerged and become a market leader over a short span of time through several attacks on Seagate and other fast growing company. • 1990 – Caviar drives introduced • 2001 – the first mass market IDE drive with an 8 MB buffer • 2003 – the first SATA drive running at 10,000 rpm • 2009 – Western Digital shipped the first 2 TB internal hard disk drive • 2010 - Western Digital shipped the first 2.5 TB and first 3 TB internal hard disk drives The market for 2009 was about product mix. Seagate (STX) leads in the desktop and the enterprise markets, which were down for 2009, while Western Digital had focused on non-desktop applications, primarily the 2.5-inch form factor for mobile and CE (Consumer Electronics), which were up in 2009 Western Digital's shipment volume grew, mostly because of the good performance of the lower-cost segment, leading to a total of 51.1 million units during the first quarter of 2010. Estimates shows Western digital has increased its lead in the 2.5-inch HDD space to 30% this past quarter compared to Seagate’s 21%. Seagate held a 41% share of the desktop market and a 61% share of the enterprise market. While the overall HDD market grew 17% sequentially in the second quarter, Seagate grew only 7% while Western Digital grew 27%. Today Western Digital expands their Caviar Green line of hard drives with two new models - 2.5 TB and 3.0 TB. These are 4-platter drives; sporting 750GB/platter (note that the current 3TB offering from Seagate is a 5-platter unit). While both Western Digital and Seagate both pushed out their external 3TB solutions a few weeks ago, doing so required them to make changes to their USB bridges Western Digital's business has more than doubled in the past five years due to the growing demand for desktop drives, greater market share, and strong growth in other hard drive products, especially in the mobile and consumer electronics markets. The company has invested an increasingly greater percentage of its revenue in capital and research and development expenses. New product development is necessary to gain a foothold in new markets and to outpace the threat of competing flash memory Western Digital had mad several Frontal attack, Flank attack, Bypass attack, Guerrilla attacks on its competitor like Samsung, Hitachi and Seagate. When Seagate for the first time introduced 3000 GB HDD which was external and big in size so just a few weeks after Western Digital introduces its 3000GB in internal Hdd that was smaller in size 3.5 inch only that was like a flank attack or bypass attack on Seagate product. The competition between Western Digital & Seagate is very tough and can be Western Digital has three deferment types of internal hard drives Caviar Blue: Performance and reliability for everyday computing. Caviar green: Cool, quiet, eco-friendly Caviar black: Maximum performance for power computing Western Digital products include external & internal hard disks, solid state Hdd, network products, passport and pocket size hard disk and home entertainment device like HD player. Hard disk size ranges 40GB to 3TB It has introduced network storage device that is the world largest in size 6TB & 8TB. Total market capital of Western Digital is 8.4 Billion dollar which is ranked 3RD all over the world in data storage devices A market follower is a firm not competing aggressively; that is aiming to maintain market share. Samsung might be a market leader in some segment but in data storage devices i.e. pc hard disk it usually follow the market follower strategy. Like so many years ago Western Digital and Seagate has created 7200rpm hard disk and they both reached upto 3tb of capacity. But Samsung has just reached making a 640 GB Hdd of 7200 rpm. Samsung develop their own technology but it follow the other technology in data storage The non-vertically integrated manufacturers: Samsung, Toshiba (TOSBF), and Fujitsu (FJTSY, who produce complete hard drive units but do not internally produce all main components (head, disc, gimbal assembly and channel decoder). These non-vertical integrated companies also have other products which they can use to offset a loss in their hard drive divisions. Market niche Some companies seek to avoid too direct competition. They can do this by developing a market niche; that is, the firm makes a product that serves a special segment of the market as a whole. Hitachi global storage technology is an example of market nicher.