The process approach to marketing in the service sector

Abstract

One of the problems related to management of competitiveness of the organizations operating in the service sector is poor methodological development of the issues of structure and content of the competitive strategy. The article reviews the most common approaches to understanding of the competitive strategy essence, namely, an approach known as «Porter's competitive strategies», Kotler's approach and the «biological» approach. The assessment of these approaches from the position of their application in the service sector on the example of retailing is provided. The notion of competitive strategy is clarified, and some of the principles of commercial organization competitiveness management, which are to be considered when devising a competitive strategy, are presented. On the basis of the process approach an iterative model of competitive strategy is proposed. The approach depicts the author's vision of the structure and main types of decisions taken when devising, adopting and implementing the competitive strategy.