Marketing Assets:A Framework for Differential Advantage

With the emergence of competition and market economies the issue of gaining and sustaining competitive advantage, became the most vital and challenging area of study in business and strategy. It received increased attention with opening up of world economies and huge improvements in technology which led to increased intensity in competition. These changes made strategists and marketers to rethink and revise their strategies to sustain competitive advantage over a period of time. They have learnt that traditional or tangible sources have lost their relevance as sustainable sources of competitive advantage. It is argued that they are easily copied or duplicated by competitors equipped with increasingly equalizing technologies and supported by new market conditions. So there is a need to identify and harness the new sources of competitive advantage which are hard to copy or duplicate and thus act as durable sources of competitive advantage. This study focuses on this research problem and has made an attempt to identify durable sources of competitive advantage, based on extensive literature survey and conceptual understanding of the subject. This paper argues that such sources rest in intangibles and capabilities of an organization. It is put forth that marketing assets, created through marketing activities, are such resources and in particular act as the potential durable sources of competitive advantage. The paper also concludes that differential advantage, one of the routes to competitive advantage, is going to be the only route to competitive advantage in future with cost advantage as one of its components.