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Article: Determining the Right Landscape: Defining a Firms Industry

The first strategic decision that most firms must make is to select the industry, and markets, in which it will compete. The Strategy in Practice feature discusses the US governments classification of industries.

A firms industry also determines which customers and which competitors will be part of the firms landscape. The landscape is typically defined by: (1) the industry (or industries) in which a firm competes, and (2) the product and geographic markets within that industry that the firm targets. For example, Nokia competes primarily in the cellular telephone manufacturing and operating system industries. Within the cellular telephone manufacturing industry, Nokia targets multiple product markets by selling a range of handsets, from high-end smartphones to inexpensive basic phones. The company also targets multiple geographic markets, focusing mainly on Europe and developing economies in the Middle East and Africa.

Be careful about assuming that it is obvious which industry a company competes in. For example, it seems obvious that Barnes & Noble competes in the book retailing industry and Microsoft competes in the computer software industry. However, it may be less obvious that those arent their only industries. In addition to operating systems, Microsoft also makes the X-Box gaming system, so it competes in the gaming console industry as well as the PC operating system industry. Barnes & Noble sells an e-reader, the Nook, that combines electronic books with computer hardware. Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobles main book retailing competitor, not only sells books and the Kindle e-Reader, but also sells web services competing with Microsoft and a wide range of products online as a discount retailer competing with Walmart. Firms must choose which markets to compete in, with many large firms choosing to compete in several at the same time.

If managers do not properly define and understand their industry, they may be vulnerable to unseen competitors. For example, Nokia defined itself primarily as a mobile handset manufacturer. As a result, managers failed to see computer hardware companies like Apple and web search companies like Google becoming potential competitorsor potential partners. (Nokia now uses Googles Android operating system on its smartphones.) Their focus on preventing Microsoft from creating a dominant position in the mobile operating system industry caused them to overlook Apple, a company that has consistently been the leader in innovative, user-friendly operating systems for a variety of platforms.¹³ At the time Apple didnt make phones, while Microsoft had announced plans to start making them. Because of how Nokia defined their industry, it was easy for them to overlook Apple, a non-phone manufacturer.