Leading a Category.

VOL. 0069 – FLORIDA, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2025

Juan F. Arjona Harry

President & CEO Strategee   

In the corporate life of the company, you need to identify under which of the competitive positions compete in a sector or category. This gives greater focus on the definition of the strategy to compete and align the company with the scale, way, direction and quality of competitive effort to consolidate a superior competitive position.

The positions under which compete in a market is four namely: leader, challenger, follower and nichero. Each requires a specific form of competitive performance that gives personality and strength to the commercial and marketing actions of the corporation. Competing in a certain position and align the company with no relation to the type of competitive position, hinder the achievement of effective results.

Each of these competitive positions requires a completely different approach to the template of Marketing and Branding. So below is a brief review of the meaning of the competitive positions:

1. Leader: should be modeling category; that is, the leader is the one who dictates the rules of competition in a sector or category, indicating where it evolves; what should be the competitive behavior of the channels, promotional template designs, innovates in terms of CRM and manages the glamor of Branding.

2. The Challenger: should play a role as challenger and it is to unbalance the leader, for which the formulation of marketing must be of constant innovation and challenge. If you are not a dominating challenger you’re nothing. The condition of the challenger is precisely that each variable must challenge the marketing of the leader with innovative proposals that baffle and amaze the market.

3. The Follower: this is a competitor that is dedicated exclusively to follow all of the leader’s successful actions. This competitor has no different innovation strategy to choose. Its marketing ends up being something similar to the leader’s one but fainter.

4. Nichero: this competitor adopts the position of leader of a niche or segment. This company is dedicated exclusively to formulate targeted marketing exclusively to conquer, to maintain and strengthen the loyalty of its customers and clients, innovate based on each variable of modern marketing, but with a focus on its segment or niche.

Below are the obligations that are derived from a competitive leadership position:

1. Develop primary demand:

1.1. In this obligation, the leader must deploy specific actions which in many cases involves taking real and robust in time-consistent programs that seek to impact the demand drivers that trigger the first use or consumption, the rate of use or consumption or replacement rate.

1.2. Likewise, should the leader be constantly monitoring the presence of substitute products in the market that came to permeate the market, so that the leader can anticipate the substitute’s actions.

1.3. Should also expand the uses, occasions of use or consumption, consumption or adjacent uses or derivatives, that impact positively and rapidly the rate of use and / or consumption per unit of consumption.

1.4. Finally, the leader must answer for the growth and expansion of the replacement rates, for use and consumption, the original equipment, the volume purchased by purchase occasion, and occasions of consumption and purchasing, ensuring a tangible extension of demand basis.

2. Innovation in the category or sector:

2.1. Then the leader must devote their R + D + I in the development of category innovation toward vertical, lateral innovation and innovation through cross fertilization.

2.2. Must also answer for mapping parity and differentiation points for further differentiation.

2.3. On another front should devote permanent efforts to maintain innovation platform activated all throughout the business process (incorporation of process technology, capturing, recording, tracking, consulting their sales consultants, statistical display available and configuring clients, attention to the processes of RQC’s (Request, Questions and Complaints), management Time to Market, among many others.

2.4. Also, the leader must identify blue or red oceans for processing, allowing re-conceptualizations of a brand, a channel, an operation, a business, an operation in a country, among others, to ensure the distance in freedom degrees over other competitors.

3. Higher growth in units and value over competitors:

3.1. This involves implementing joint actions between commercial and marketing areas which are identified in the Strategic Growth Matrix.

3.2. Then identify and declare the growth drivers of the corporation, to impact them safely but effectively with operational discipline in the implementation, for which the company should adopt the methodology Servuction.

3.3. And finally, the leader should take the time to think in a creative way to aggressively implement every tactic.

4. Modeling category or sector:

4.1. Leader must internalize that the category model presupposes some minimum requirement such as the creation of the rules of competition in the sector or category.

4.2. Leader must create superior service parameters and must be seen as an organization that seeks to provide superior service.

4.3. Likewise the leader must generate the value for money equation that optimizes its operation in the market, achieving its best to the brand itself and generating competitive benchmark for others in the industry.

4.4. Finally, the leader must answer for the generation and / or transmission of cutting-edge knowledge about the category.

5. Tactically enable selective demand:

5.1. At this point the leader should always create programs-campaigns-trade marketing activities, which always have the ability to engage the traction behavioral purchase decision towards their brands.

5.2. Also should be the first dynamic relationships with the channel, giving the channel gain reasons to adopt their programs-campaigns-trade marketing activities.

5.3. Also must make identify its weaker competitor to take his market and continue with the rest.

5.4. Never decide on any commercial activity without the support of the numbers.

5.5. And finally, link the commercial success performance evaluations of all its sales force including its marketing force.

Whenever the marketing for a company or brand is designed; is very important to clearly define from which competitive position is going to compete, then definitely impact the competitive position, the direction taken by each variable and the right path to achieving tangible marketing results. The competitive position of leader gives many benefits, always produces higher results in terms of return on equity for the brands and an improved EBITDA margin; but requires academic preparation and executional ability of the corporation.