Understanding and responding to new forms of competition

Purpose: The purpose of this note is to provide some brand strategy perspectives to Sheth and Koschmann’s Do brands compete or coexist? How persistence of brand loyalty segments the market. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is a comment piece written in response to Sheth and Koschmann’s “Do brands compete or coexist? How persistence of brand loyalty segments the market”. Findings: In their article, Jagdish Sheth and Anthony Koschmann provide a very useful empirically grounded example of how categories can evolve to be dominated by two or three key players and some of the implications which result from that. In doing so, they offer a number of useful insights. At the same time, however, it should be recognized that a number of competitive forces have emerged in recent years that have disrupted long-established equilibria and threatened long-term leadership in numerous categories. This note describes the nature of those forces and outlines three strategic approaches to improve the odds of long-term brand leadership and success. Originality/value: This response to Sheth and Koschmann’s paper provides a scholarly dialogue centered upon the premise of brand loyalty within the context of market competition.