Market Share

Antarasian and Graham challenge the conventional view that increasing market share is a mark of success, arguing that in some business environments it may actually be a firm's best strategy to sacrifice market share.

They are particularly concerned with industries which experience a periodic boomandbust cycle. During the "boom" phase of such a cycle, firms may be strongly tempted to grow at least in pace with the growth of the market, if not to outpace that growth and grab a larger market share. Antarasian and Graham found, however, that smaller companies in cyclical industries were actually more profitable through the cycle when they sacrificed market share during the growth phase. The reason is that the fastgrowing companies tend to plow potential profits back into growth, and their rapid expansion may actually increase, rather than reduce, marginal unit costs. (The authors present an interesting instance in which Sony's Akio Morita actually quoted a higher unit price for a larger run.) Such companies are caught badly overextended when the downside of the cycle hits.

This is a wellargued and highly thoughtprovoking article. The long boom of the 1980s promoted much complacency about continual growth  complacency now being undermined in many industries. Many CEOs could constr

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their study is based on a study sent to 650 subjects and responded to by 270. They identify two types of belief, "behavioral belief" which combines with expected outcomes to produce an "attitude." "Normative belief" about company standards combines with "motivation to comply" to produce a "subjective norm." Then, the resulting "attitude" and "subjective norm" further combine to shape "intention," which in turn shapes ultimate behavior. If a sales manager believes that customer bribery will promote sales, this will shape his attitude. His belief that the company frowns on bribery will effect ultimate behavior only if management exectations are a "salient referent"  i.e., if he is motivated to comply to norms out of the belief that they will be enforced. In general, this is a somewhat interesting model for the shaping of behavior regarding ethical issues. In effect, it reduces, however, to saying that ethical standards will be taken seriously if they are seen by individuals to be taken seriously  i.e., enforced, by formal sanction or by corporate culture. It is not clear that this finding actually helps either individual marketing managers or top management to understand marketing ethics, or to instill e
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Approximate Word count = 1464
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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