Breaking Compromises: Opportunities for Action in Consumer Markets - Hardcover

Take this book along on your next business trip. In about the time it takes to jet from New York to Chicago, you will gain fresh, practical insights into today's most challenging consumer goods topics, from e-commerce to globalization. (Robert A. Eckert, President & CEO, Kraft Foods, Inc.) Over the past few years, a select group of top CEOs and senior managers of consumer companies have received BCG's Opportunities for Action in Consumer Markets, a monthly series of articles written by members of the firm's consumer goods and retail practice. Now the rest of the business world can benefit from these ideas. Drawn from the consultants' own research and client work, the essays detail how successful companies find ideas, bring together resources to test them, learn from their mistakes, and, ultimately, how they succeed. (Steven S Reinemund, President & COO, PepsiCo, Inc.) Branded manufacturers need to refocus on developing new products to fend off consolidating retailers and private labels. Retailers need to uncover the missing link between the company's strategy and its implementation at the frontline to provide the kind of service customers are demanding. The challenge is continuous innovation, which is about ideas and process, not one or the other. The essays in Breaking Compromises speak to the most pressing issues across entire range of consumer businesses today. (William D. Perez, President & COO, Worldwide Consumer Products, S.C. Johnson & Son) The consumer industry is undergoing a revolution, not only in how its products and services are made, distributed, marketed, and sold, but also in how consumers learn about, shop for, purchase, and repurchase them. The ideas in Breaking Compromises will help you not only to survive the upheaval in your environment, but ultimately to leverage it for improved performance and the highest returns. (Indra K. Nooyi, Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy & Development, PepsiCo, Inc.) If the past decade has taught us anything about retail, it is that change is not only inevitable, it is imperative. To stand still is to declare defeat. To overcome complacency, outsmart and outexecute the competition, and stay ahead of shifting markets, a business must constantly and consistently replenish its stock of fresh insights. This compendium of business practices and wisdom is a very good first step. (Dan Finkelman, Senior Vice President, Brand & Business Planning, The Limited, Inc.)

This work assembles a wide-ranging collection of BCG "thought pieces" in the field of marketing and branding, many of them previously available only to the consultancy's clients. Its central theme of "breaking compromises" refers to the act of moving beyond the impasse of the problematic "either/or" scenario - for example, a product may be perceived as being either cheap or good quality but seldom both. In an environment where customers must compromise to choose, these pieces demonstrate how innovative companies can expose these compromises and use the knowledge to recalibrate the relationship between customer and product.