A common tool used within marketing was developed by Igor Ansoff in 1957. His model gives organisation five strategic business options.
1. Market Penetration: This involves increasing sales of an existing product and penetrating the market further by either promoting the product heavily or reducing prices to increase sales.
2. Product Development: The organisation develops new products to aim within their existing market, in the hope that they will gain more custom and market share. For Example Sony launching the Playstation 2 to replace their existing model..
3. Market Development: The organisation here adopts a strategy of selling existing products to new markets. This can be done either by a better understanding of segmentation, i.e who else can possibly purchase the product or selling the product to new markets overseas.
4. Diversification: Moving away from what you are selling (your core activities) to providing something new eg Moving over from selling foods to selling cars.
5. Consolidation: Where the organisation adopts a strategy of withdrawing from particular markets, scaling back on operations and concentrating on its existing products in existing markets.