Competition and management action

Competition in our economy takes place within a dynamic framework largely beyond the control of any individual management. Among the changing elements that will provide a backdrop for future competitive situations are: (1) continued economic growth, and accelerating rates of scientific and technological development, (2) an increasing availability of leisure time and greater mobility on a very broad base, (3) a great increase in discretionary buying power and hence postponable purchases, (4) a population explosion which is resulting not only in more consumers but greater proportions of the population at both ends of the age spectrum, (5) a revolution in information and information handling, including an explosion of knowledge that is useful in business administration, marketing, and related fields, (6) increasingly vigorous domestic and foreign competition brought about by the creation of such markets as the European Common Market.

Such factors stimulate the appearance of new marketing forms, the break down of traditional product lines, and the revision of institutional and organizational classifications. They encourage an accelerated rate of product development. They foster changing concepts of transportation, warehousing, communications, and commercial intelligence, all of which result in more aggressive competition and planned innovation. They will have a great impact upon the business system of the future.

The society that we live in is most accurately described by its changing parameters. However, businessmen who are confronted with these dynamic elements, for many reasons often resist change. In fact one approach to change in the past was the philosophy that whatever was good enough for previous consumers is good enough for present and future consumers. Change was viewed with suspicion. As a result, competition was not as dynamic, as keen, as aggressive, and as vigorous as it is now. Likewise, market opportunities which result from change remained unrecognized and unsatisfied.

Today, however, management cannot ignore change and the accompanying opportunities. They cannot plot inflexible courses of action for long periods of time. Management must be fluid and viable. It must be prepared to deal with new problems and processes. It must continuously chart new directions.

In such a dynamic atmosphere, managers must recognize that change is the constant in planning, organizing, and controlling activities. Management's responsibility becomes that of anticipation, of adaptation, and of innovation
under conditions of accelerating rates of change. In fact the emphasis, in many enterprises in the near future, is not likely to be on operations. "It is going to be on change -- change to give business new roles, new clientele, new products and new processes. Indeed, in many ways we are entering a future in which the management of business is going to change and become very much like the management of a total research process -- a carefully planned learning effort in which knowledge itself is the scarcest resource being allocated." Marketing knowledge will govern the future competitive effectiveness of a firm. A greater emphasis on research, knowledge, and innovation, will also result in more intelligent approaches to competition.