Competing in Customer Driven Markets: A Holistic Approach by Amila Jayarathne

In order to become market-driven, companies need to identify the right market signals, build sensing capabilities, define demand-shaping products, and successfully translate the demand signal to create an effective response. In turn, firms expect to develop and maintain a competitive advantage for a longer period of time, the so-called sustainable competitive advantages. This discussion of competition and gaining sustainable competitive advantage has been evolved with a long history. However, in the discipline of marketing, the discussion of competition is mostly developed around the three generic approaches for developing competitive position according to Michael Porter, even though recent marketing textbooks have slightly discussed some marketing implications beyond the company perspective. It is worth noting that supply chain books mainly discuss the beyond firm operation, though their concern on competition is marginal. However, this book, titled Competing in Customer Driven Markets: A Holistic Approach, discusses a different perspective of competition, challenging the traditional perspective that limits mostly to the firm level. The new perspective of competition discussed in this book has a broader outlook extending the scope of competition to the supply network level.