CHAPTER 4: CATEGORY ATTRACTIVENESS ANALYSIS

CHAPTER FOCUS
The purpose of this chapter is to describe a basic analysis of the product category in
which the product competes. Obviously, it requires the material from Chapter 3 as a pre-requisite
since the product manager must define the category. This part of the marketing plan forces the
manager to consider the categorys life cycle stage, collect some data about the categorys sales,
shares, profits, and consider the competitive situation of the category through a variation of
Porters well-known five forces. It also requires the manager to confront the environmental
factors facing the product. Our spin on these data is that they can be assessed as being
attractive or unattractive from the product managers perspective. It is important to note that they
may give the manager some ideas about how to take unattractive category characteristics (i.e.,
strong suppliers) and turn them into advantages (i.e., long-term supply contracts).
Like Chapter 2, the material does not lend itself to an exciting class discussion. One can
go through the various elements of the analysis giving examples, but we have found that students
are generally smart enough to read the chapter and get the gist of what has to be done. The best
way to teach the material is to ask the students to prepare an analysis in advance, usually based
on a case study. However, given that many of the dimensions of the analysis are qualitative and
not quantitative, students can prepare an analysis of almost any reasonably visible category.

CASES
There are many cases that can be used here. In fact, any case with a reasonable amount of
data about the category or industry may be used. The cases listed in the previous chapter also
work well here. We often assign one of these cases and draw out both the competitive structure
and the attractiveness (and sometimes even the competitor analysis although that takes longer to
do thoroughly).

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