Competitive Positioning and Strategy with CubIT V2
Tutorial - Getting Started

Many strategy textbooks provide outline descriptions of the different types of offensive and defensive strategies that can be adopted by competing organisations (see diagrams below). However, few indicate which are the most appropriate strategies to pursue under a given set of circumstances, and perhaps more importantly which strategies should not be pursued, and why.

Offensive Strategies

CubIT V2 addresses this issue by helping you to plot your position (vis-a-vis a target competitor) on a simple 3 dimensional cube, and suggests various logical strategies which might be adopted to improve your competitive position. It also indicates what 'retaliation' you might expect from your target competitor.

Defensive Strategies

Along with the software, we issue two important warnings!

Firstly, CubIT V2 is NOT intended to be prescriptive! The authors DO NOT intend that you follow every recommendation verbatim, and close your mind to all of the various strategic alternatives outlined here, and in other excellent sources of information on the subject. Keep an open mind!

Secondly, like all models which attempt to explain our complex environment - particularly models for strategic analysis - CubIT V2 has its limitations. For example, three major criteria are considered within CubIT V2, namely 'Market Presence', 'Competitiveness of Offer' and 'Resource'. Whilst we hope that these provide a useful framework within which to consider your situation, they may not be adequate. Also, the reactions of target competitors may be quite different from those predicted within the model (particularly when egocentric personalities are involved). No model on earth can mimick the true complexity of your marketing environment.

This tool is intended to provide you with logical reasoned ideas, to help stimulate the debate about strategy within your organisation, and hopefully to prevent you from making some of the disasterous moves made by your counterparts in other industries and companies that so often make the corporate headlines for all the wrong reasons. So plot your position, and that of your competitor, and learn about the alternatives in a friendly, interactive and supportive environment. And have fun! ...

You are now ready to progress to the next step. Each of the steps supported by CubIT V2 can be explored in greater depth below. You can click on the adjacent buttons in order to follow the recommended sequence, or click <PREVIOUS  NEXT > at the foot of each individual page as appropriate. All of the diagrams used within the following pages have been extracted from a working version of CubIT V2.

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