Marketing Warfare.............

Frontal Attack - This is a direct head-on assault. It usually involves marshaling all your resources including a substantial financial commitment. All parts of your company must be geared up for the assault from marketing to production. It usually involves intensive advertising assaults and often entails developing a new product that is able to attack the target competitors’ line where it is strong.But they are expensive. Many valuable resources will be used and lost in the assault. Secondly, frontal attacks are often unsuccessful. If defenders are able to re-deploy their resources in time, the attacker’s strategic advantage is lost. You will be confronting strength rather than weakness. A good example for this warfare is Pepsi Vs Coke. They both are attacking each other head on and are strong in resources. 

Envelopment Strategy (also called encirclement strategy) - This is a much broader but subtle offensive strategy. It involves encircling the target competitor. This can be done in two ways. You could introduce a range of products that are similar to the target product. Each product will liberate some market share from the target competitor’s product, leaving it weakened, demoralized, and in a state of siege. If it is done stealthily, a full scale confrontation can be avoided. Alternatively, the encirclement can be based on market niches rather than products. The attacker expands the market niches that surround and encroach on the target competitor’s market. This encroachment liberates market share from the target. Tata Tea Vs HUL is a classic example. Tata tea cannot take a frontal attack on HUL due to its size and power. So it strategically developed similar products for each variant of tea and entered into market niches in and around the strong holds of

HUL. This worked well for Tata tea and helped them percolate into the market.

Leapfrog Strategy - This involves bypassing the enemy's forces altogether. It involves either developing new technologies, or creating new business models. This is a revolutionary strategy that re-writes the rule of the game. A good example may be ICICI bank. Its entry into the banking has transcended the landscape and the competitive space. Its ATMs and Internet banking attracted the elite and the creamy layer and stuck to them through the first mover advantage.