Bowman's Strategy Clock*Making Sense of Eight Competitive Positions* (*https://www.mindtools.com/community/pages/article/newSTR_93.htm) In many open markets , most goods and services can be purchased from any number of companies and customers have a huge amount of choice. It is the job of companies in the market to find their competitive advantage and meet customer needs better than the next company. So, given the high degree of competitiveness among companies in a market, how can one company gain a competitive advantage over others? When there are only a finite number of unique products and services available on the market, how do different organizations sell essentially the same things at different prices and with different degrees of success? This is a classic question that has been asked by generations of professionals. In 1980, Michael Porter published his seminal book, “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors,” in which he reduced competition to three classic strategies: cost leadership, product differentiation; and market segmentation. These generic strategies represented the three ways in which an organization could provide its customers with what they wanted at a better price or more effectively than others. In essence, Porter argued that companies compete on price (cost), perceived value (differentiation), or by focusing on a very specific customer (market segmentation). Competing through lower prices or by offering greater perceived value has become a very popular way of thinking about competitive advantage. For many entrepreneurs, however, these strategies were a little too general and they wanted to think about different combinations of value and price in more detail. Looking at Porter's strategies in a different way, in 1996, Cliff Bowman and David Faulkner developed Bowman's Strategy Clock. This business strategy model extends Porter's three strategic positions to eight and explains the combinations of cost and perceived value used by many companies, as well as identifying the probability of success for each strategy. Figure 1 below represents Bowman's eight different strategies identified by different price and value levels. {draw:frame} Position 1: Low Price/Low Value Companies typically do not choose to compete in this category. This is the “business basement” container and not many companies want to be in this position. Rather, it is a position in which they find themselves forced to compete because their product does not have differentiated value.