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Competitive Positioning Analysis

Short Description

Competitive positioning analysis is conducted to enable a firm to make strategic plans in relation to its current competitive position: These may be to preserve an advantage, attempt an improvement, or withdraw from a market. The analysis assesses market share, client perception of products and service, current marketing strategies, prices, and costs. It also provides information about the relative market positions and strengths and weaknesses of a firm's competitors. The process identifies opportunities and points to strategies to exploit these opportunities in an industry or market.

Background

A firm's competitive position refers to its place in an industry or market in comparison with its competitors. The concept of "positioning" appears to have come from Jack Trout's 1969 paper,¹ "Positioning' is a game people play in today's me-too marketplace." At the time, it revolutionized the idea of communication with a market. Where traditional marketing had been based on the idea of telling clients about the benefits of your product in comparison with your competitors, positioning attempts to change the perception of your product in the mind of a target audience by giving your product a unique position.

Competitive positioning explores an industry in part by researching the perceptions of the clients serviced by it and looks for ways to improve perceptions of your firm overall. It also extends the positioning concept beyond product marketing and feeds information into the firm's strategic planning and strategic management.

Strategic planning and strategic management evolved around the same time as positioning. Linden Brown² notes that "corporate planning" employed by firms up to the 1960s was founded on reasonably steady expansion in a relatively stable financial environment. Corporate planning could not guide firms through the turbulent economic conditions and rapidly changing markets of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Strategic planning and strategic management evolved to provide firms with tools to review their performance and plan for the future in order to cope with increasingly competitive and volatile markets.

Competitive positioning is an umbrella term for a variety of different tools and processes designed to apprise a firm of its competitive position and inform strategic decisions made in relation to it. Competitive positioning is also the name given to the action of strategically changing a firm's position in the marketplace.

Competitive positioning analysis provides information with direct importance to the development of a strategic plan by giving a firm an overview of its industry and enabling it to apprise its own competitive position. Essentially, it assesses factors that impact on market performance and profit performance. It examines a particular industry and the participants within it to provide an understanding of the industry and the competition. It looks at who is competing and how, what market share they have, how clients perceive the participants in the industry, how the various participants operate in the marketplace, and their strengths and weaknesses.

Strategic Rationale and Implications

Competitive positioning is based on the truism that business is characterized by competition. Where more than one participant is involved in an industry, competition exists not only to win the business of clients by convincing them that they need your product, but to do so better than your competitors. This necessitates a marketing strategy for your products and/or services and also a competitive marketing strategy to differentiate your firm from its competitors.

Undertaking an analysis of your competitive position compares your firm's position in an industry or market with that of its competitors. Such an analysis should include information about the structure of the industry and the participants; outline their operating practices; cover customer satisfaction and profitability issues; and provide an overall appraisal of your firm's position.

The competitive positioning process requires a detailed analysis of a firm's own business and the various markets (or market segments) in which it competes. Competitive positioning analysis is designed to give you an understanding of your firm's competitive position within its industry and an overview of the industry as a whole. This is fundamentally important to developing an effective competitive marketing strategy as it broadens your outlook beyond your own revenue, products, and services, and gives an industry-wide perspective of your firm's performance and opportunities.

The most common structure found in a market is for there to be one clear market leader; a second major player differentiated from the leader; a substantial amount of lower-priced competition; and then niche specialists, who generally charge a price premium and cater to specific needs. One variation on this structure is the situation where a market is dominated by two firms of roughly the same size, which hold a large majority of market share (that is, a duopoly).

Using a variety of different tools and processes, a firm can address its current competitive position and inform strategic decisions made in relation to it. The key outcome of the analysis is some action of strategically changing a firm's position in the marketplace.

Porter's Five Forces Industry analysis and the Nine Forces Industry analysis, for example, are all sophisticated tools for identifying a firm's competitive position (see Chapter 6, "Industry Analysis (The Nine Forces)").

A variety of modeling concepts are also useful in analyzing competitive position. These include the BCG matrix, McKinsey matrix, and perceptual maps. By feeding the relevant information into one of these analytical models, a firm's competitive position may be readily visualized.

There are four basic directions for any competitive strategy, as follows:

• To develop and build on a firm's position
• To maintain and hold a firm's strong market position
• To defend a dominant position
• To withdraw from a market with minimal loss

Develop and Build on the Firm's Position

There are three broad situations where a firm may wish to develop and build its position. These are the following:

1. A niche firm looking to expand its business
2. A minor competitor seeking to become a dominant force
3. A firm in a position of joint dominance wishing to move to sole dominance

These three competitive positions may also be viewed as a progression of strategic position from niche to broad market dominance.

A firm in any one of these positions will be looking for weaknesses in its competitors, which can be easily exploited to its own advantage. A niche firm may be looking for unfulfilled segments in the market. These may be segments viewed as not profitable enough for the dominant firm to pursue but may be worthwhile for a niche firm seeking to consolidate its position as a force in the marketplace.

A minor competitor may try to focus on gaps in the market not properly serviced by the dominant firm.

Where a market is dominated by two or more major firms, competitive positioning analysis may give insight into how one of these may differentiate itself from its competitors or reposition its product/service within the market in order to gain a competitive advantage and market dominance.

Maintain and Hold the Firm's Strong Market Position

In this situation, a firm is not seeking dominance within a market, but wishes to hold onto its share of the market against all incumbents. Where a market is mature and no longer expanding, it is unlikely that there will be interest to invest in expanding market share. The ideal position for a firm in this market would be to preserve its market share (and revenue) for as long as the market remains profitable with minimal outlay of resources.

Defend a Dominant Position

A position of dominance in a market has advantages going beyond the immediate revenue stream and economies of scale that come with size. Market dominance allows a firm to manage the market and control competition to some extent. Often the dominant product in a market can be perceived as the standard by clients.

Apart from consolidating its position against its major competitors, the dominant firm should also be aware of any developing "third force" coming between it and its traditional competitors. The emergence of significant new competition can undercut profits for all existing players by siphoning away market share.

The dominant firm in the market generally has a variety of strategies available to it to fend off competition. It may choose to follow a price-cutting strategy, although this is costly and may have a negative affect on clients by changing cost expectations or perceptions of product quality. A dominant firm may launch new products in direct competition with any competitor that tries to fill in gaps in the market. These new products may trade on the high esteem in which clients hold the dominant firm or may simply dilute the profitability of new products for smaller firms, leading them to withdraw from the market.

Withdraw from a Market

There are times when it may be best for a firm's overall competitive position to withdraw completely from a particular market, leaving the firm to concentrate on more profitable markets. This may occur where the market itself is declining—for example, because technology is rendering it obsolete. A declining market is one where profits are falling and the costs of doing business will eventually outweigh possible revenue, even for the market leader. Ideally, where a market is declining, a firm should aim to get its clients to substitute the product being withdrawn with another product from the same firm or at least to withdraw the product with as little inconvenience to clients as possible.

Unsuccessful expansion or diversification by a firm into a new market may also leave the firm in an unprofitable position and thereby needing to withdraw. Additionally analysis of competitors may point to the likelihood of a market player being able to sustain the investment necessary to support the expansion/diversification in the face of defensive strategies from existing market players.

Once you have a detailed understanding of your firm's competitive position and the industry it is situated in, you are then equipped to design and implement strategic plans to defend or improve your competitive position or even to cut your losses and withdraw from the market.

Strengths and Advantages

Competitive positioning analysis provides detailed and practical information about the industry and markets in which a firm competes. It generates practical strategic information to improve competitive position that may be immediately incorporated into the firm's strategic plan.

The process will provide useful information to firms of all sizes and in many different competitive positions. Major firms with market dominance may use the results to consolidate their positions. Minor players in an industry may use the results to increase market share and expand the markets in which they participate. Established firms may use the results to keep up with changes in their industry or markets. New firms may get valuable information about how to go about establishing themselves within an industry or market. Gaps uncovered in a market may point to a need or desire in a marketplace for particular new products or styles of products or services.

Competitive positioning analysis may also provide information about the viability of particular products or markets within an industry, allowing informed decisions about developing or discontinuing products. It may further be used to provide information about competition in new markets and give guidance about how to best enter a particular new market.

Improving your firm's competitive position additionally puts it in a better position to attract investment and enter strategically desirable alliances.

Weaknesses and Limitations

The quality of the information obtained by conducting a competitive positioning analysis will depend on the design of the process. Care must be taken when defining the industry or markets you wish to study. The analysis will be compromised where the industry examined is defined too narrowly (and important or potentially important competitors are omitted), and where the industry is defined too widely (and meaningless comparisons are made with firms that are not relevant competitors).

It is important to take care in accurately and comprehensively identifying relevant markets and products for the same reasons.

Another limitation of competitive positioning analysis is its reliance on information about competitors. In some industries, competitor information is not readily available. In other industries, there may be individual firms that do make particular information available. It is also possible that a firm will not be able to gather meaningfully detailed information about the new products in development with competitors. It is also possible to find that competitors have been circulating misinformation specifically to confound any competitive positioning analysis undertaken by their market rivals. Gaps in the information you are able to gather may compromise the reliability of the analysis you conduct.

A firm that chooses to carry out its own competitive positioning analysis and draw its own strategic conclusions may find the final strategies are limited by internal biases. Incomplete briefing of a third-party analyst may result in a misdirected analysis and missing important nuances in the industry and/or market.

Process for Applying the Technique

Competitive positioning can be understood as a broad three-step process:

1. Identify the focus of your firm's current strategy and identify analysis parameters such as market or products to be assessed.
2. Conduct analysis with the following:
   

   (a) Undertake market segmentation to gain a better understanding of competitors and the breakdown of your industry.

   (b) Undertake industry analysis to get a more detailed understanding of the competitive environment.

   (c) Conduct market research to gain insight into client perceptions of the market, products, and competitors (including your own firm).

3. Derive insights from the preceding analysis and formulate a positioning strategy for your firm.

Both primary information (focusing on the needs and perceptions of clients) and secondary information (which looks at facts and trends) are used throughout the competitive positioning analytical process.

Secondary research should provide you with objective information about market share, market size, expected growth, and general economic conditions in the marketplace.

Although this information is available from publicly available sources, such as online databases and industry publications, it may be more expedient to get a professional researcher to undertake this part of the project, even if the rest of the project is being run in-house. Unless you have internal staff who regularly monitor this sort of information, tracking all the background information can be time-consuming.

A particularly interesting source of secondary information for competitive positioning may be the PIMS database, which provides market and competitive profiles and business results from some 3,000 firms arranged by industry category. The PIMS (profit impact of market strategy) project has been collating information since 1972 and aims to pool collective business experience for the benefit of other firms in similar industries. Although PIMS data has no accurate predictive power, it can give insight into how the structural attributes of a business may have an impact on its competitive position. The database may be accessed at www.pimsonline.com. It is a subscription service.

Identify Current Strategy and Market/Product/Project Parameters

Assessing your current business and marketing strategies will provide you a background to your firm's current position in the market and a starting point from which to plan the strategies arising from the competitive positioning project. This is also the step in the process when you will be defining the scope of the project and what you hope to gain out of it.

One of the issues then to be addressed in this step is how you plan to use the information you obtain. This will have an impact on the depth of analysis you undertake throughout this process. For example, a project that is looking for competitive positioning strategies relating to distribution has a much narrower focus than a complete competitive positioning analysis. Whatever level of detail you are aiming for, you need to make early decisions about categories of information you will need to gather. The division of information into categories is arbitrary and is a fundamental part of the project design.

Another point that needs to be considered is the level of detail you plan to go into with your research itself. The level of analysis will depend on the size of any investment likely to flow from the competitive positioning process. For example, if a multi-million dollar refit of a manufacturing plant is contemplated, then a more expensive and detailed analysis is not only justified but advisable.

Linden Brown observes that the factors considered in appraising competitive position are basically all the factors that have an impact on market performance—for example, market share, revenue, brand image, and profit performance, including costs, margins, prices, and productivity. These factors may be examined at the industry level or at the level of individual niche product markets within an industry.

A preliminary investigation of your firm's current portfolio is often a useful place to start and might be typical of a product/market matrix, as shown in Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1 Product/market matrix

The Boston Consult Group (BCG) growth-share matrix³ provides a graphic representation of markets, products and services, which can be useful in judging where to focus resources. Looking at your product and/or service range plotted on a growth-share matrix can provide an indication of what strategies may be appropriate for your various products.

Another method for assessing your own products and/or services is the GE/McKinsey attractiveness-competitive position matrix.⁴ Plotting the strength of a business/product/service against the attractiveness of the industry for your firm will identify a potential course of action.

However, a note of caution: The BCG model vastly simplifies market conditions, which in reality can be very complex, and in some circumstances, there may be strategic value in treating products differently. In addition, despite the relative complexity of the GE/McKinsey model compared to the growth-share matrix, it can still miss some subtleties of a firm's business.

Another preliminary issue is who will run the project. A project team, which crosses departments within the firm, will ensure that the learning experience of those involved is distributed throughout the firm. Keeping the project out of the control of just one department may also diminish the likelihood of the project outcomes being skewed by internal politics. It will also ensure that the time taken by staff in gathering information is not all lost to one department. T.L. Louden⁵ advises that while internal staff may gather most of the information used, independent third parties should be involved in the process of visualizing the final competitive positioning strategies arising from the competitive positioning analysis. These people will have experience in the process of identifying strategies from analysis and will be independent of any internal biases that may compromise the effectiveness of the final strategies.

Conduct Analysis

(a) Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is a process that divides your market into distinct groups of clients who share particular characteristics. A market segment is a way to conceptualize a target market. A market segment must be identifiable and measurable; accessible by communication/distribution channels; have unique needs (compared to other market segments); be relatively stable over time; and be large enough to be profitably targeted for its business.

These segments may be made up of individual consumers or industry consumers, and the basis for dividing them into segments varies slightly between the two client groups. Individual consumers are divided into market segments on four broad bases: geography (which includes not only location, but also population density and growth); demographics (age, gender, etc.); psychographic variables (including values, lifestyle, and attitudes); and client behavior (including brand loyalty, usage made of product, and sensitivity to price). An industry client segment will be identified by geography (concentration of clients, regional growth, and international considerations); client type (how big are client organizations, what industry are they part of); and how the clients behave (are they loyal to suppliers, and how big and/or frequent are their orders).

Segmenting your markets in this way will narrow your client base into smaller groups and make it easy for you to identify the competitors who also compete for each segment's business.

Segmentation is a valuable exercise from a planning point of view, as it will provide obvious categories of clients to target with specific products and/or specific marketing strategies.

As an alternative to market segmentation, Pankaj Ghemawat⁶ suggests breaking your firm's activities into economically meaningful categories to allow close attention to the impact of costs and client willingness to pay for product. This can be done by undertaking value chain analysis.⁷

Another approach might be to focus on key assets and skills you judge to be essential to competition in your industry or individual product markets within your industry. In Developing Business Strategies, David Aaker⁸ suggests four broad areas to concentrate on when you are determining what are the key assets and skills in your particular industry (or within a market): reasons some firms are successful and some are not; major motivations for clients in deciding who to do business with; major component costs; and the ease with which firms may enter or reposition themselves within the industry (or market).

(b) Industry Analysis

Areas you may focus on include investigating current and potential products and markets of your competitors. Additionally, you will need to understand the structural characteristics of the industry. For example, is it very competitive? How many competitors exist in the field? Is it subject to regulation? Is ownership of firms in the industry stable? Is the industry concentrated in one geographical area? Are there gaps in market coverage?

Industry analysis provides a strategic assessment of the competitive position of each of your competitors within a given market. This analysis considers the existing rivalry between suppliers in the market; the threat posed by new entrants; the bargaining power of clients in the marketplace; the power of suppliers; and any threat to the market posed by substitute products. It can also address the broader industry framework to identify the trends that will impact the long-term direction of a market. (See Chapter 6 for detailed information about how to conduct this type of analysis.)

A SWOT analysis⁹ or competitor analysis¹⁰ of your competitors may also be useful in identifying competitors' existing strengths and weaknesses and opportunities arising for your firm. It may also identify any threats to your competitors, which you may be able to utilize to your competitive advantage.

(c) Market Research

Traditional market research will give valuable insight into client perceptions of a marketplace and the suppliers servicing it (these are your firm and your competitors). Feedback may be sought on various product types, individual products, various services, various suppliers, and client desires in terms of improved product or service.

Market research may be undertaken via telemarketing or face-to-face interviews—preferably by an independent third party to limit internal firm biases. It may also use detailed surveys designed and administered by specialist researchers to generate statistically comparable empirical information.

The scope of your competitive positioning project as identified in the first step will inform your decision as to who and how to undertake this research.

Review Results and Formulate Positioning Strategy

A great deal of detailed information will be obtained in undertaking competitive positioning analysis. The simplest and most commonly used way to get an overview of the results of your research may be to use perceptual maps to give a quick graphic summary of the main findings.

A perceptual map plots the position of a firm or product in space generally using two axes. Information may be plotted using more than one axis; however, this may be difficult to represent as a two-dimensional graphic.

Perceptual maps plot perceptual information and may include vectors indicating the preferred performance for a product/service/firm across the two axes commonly attributed by clients. These maps can be generated by software.

Figure 7.2 shows a perceptual map addressing the pain relief tablet market. The axes are based on key criteria as identified by clients.

Figure 7.2 Perceptual map with ideal vectors in the pain relief market
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_map (last accessed October 2006).

However, these are not accurate reflections of reality, being based on perceptions to start with and then subject to possible distortion in the process of converting verbal opinions into a numerically generated graph. Perceptual maps have attracted criticism for being no more than intuitive reflections of pre-existing biases.

It is important that perceptual maps should be interpreted in tandem with the detailed information from which they are drawn. Used with caution, perceptual maps can give a quick picture of competition in the marketplace from the point of view of clients.

Another way to conduct an appraisal of the analysis and to help formulate appropriate strategies is to compile evaluations of your firm's and each competitor's strengths and weaknesses in terms of a matrix. For each key business area or critical success factor, competitors can be evaluated in a matrix relative to your own abilities. This provides an overview and understanding of your position against key competitive factors in your industry. Figure 7.3 shows an example of a matrix relating to the quality of a marketing communications.

Figure 7.3 Strength/weakness evaluation matrix

Compiling matrices or perceptual maps and referring back to the information gathered should enable the analyst and the project team to generate a list of opportunities available to not only improve the firms competitive positioning but to address specific problem areas for longer term competitive advantage.

T. L. Louden¹¹ advises that while internal staff may competently gather most of the information used, independent third parties should be involved in the process of visualizing the final competitive positioning strategies arising from the competitive positioning analysis. These people will have experience in the process of identifying strategies from analysis and will be independent of any internal biases that may compromise the effectiveness of the final strategies.

Summary

In essence, a complete competitive positioning analysis will put together the following:

1. A clear outline of your own firm's current and potential markets and products. Some options for management may start to be identified. The product/market matrix reproduced in Figure 7.1 may be a useful template.
2. Identify competitive practices in the industry, covering such areas as the principal relationships between costs, revenue, and profits; who has competitive advantage in which areas; the level to which the industry is tradition bound; opportunities for innovation; advantages arising for differing geographical/environmental factors; weaknesses to exploit; and strengths to overcome or avoid.
   Additionally, competitor profiles may expose an organization and management style; corporate goals; marketing, sales, and customer support strategies and practice; production processes (particularly productively and costs); technical and support systems; finance (including accounting and control systems); investment management (portfolio and performance); and staff (including turnover, level of remuneration, and personnel policies).
3. Review general and specific factors contributing to client satisfaction with their current suppliers (your firm and your competitors) including: quality of product (including whether products are perceived as meeting needs); client ability to understand value of purchases; whether the market prefers one-stop suppliers or specialist sources; availability and convenience of products; quality of service; tendency to be loyal to their supplier or to shop around; whether short- or long-term performance of products will reflect on reputation of supplier; and effort required to change suppliers. Any customer dissatisfaction suggests an opportunity for your firm to step in and meet the unmet need.
4. Undertake an overall appraisal of the competitive environment to identify any strategies or tactics, which may improve your firm's competitive position and identified a set of strategies to take the firm where it wishes to go in an industry.

The detailed information gathered during the competitive positioning project give a comprehensive picture of the industry, markets, and products on which it focuses. Any gaps in market coverage, or potential weak points in the position of the dominant firm in the market, should be obvious. This information can be used to inform decisions about directions for new product development or provide clues as to what strategy might successfully attack the dominance of the market leader and steal away some market share.

The satisfaction or otherwise of clients served by any particular market or unmet needs perceived by clients should be apparent. This analysis may also give clues for strategic development of a new product or for more effective marketing and sales approaches in the market.

Case Study: Financial Services

Increasing competition and a slowdown in the economy prompted the capital mortgage division of a very large financial services firm to seek feedback from the market.

In particular, the division wanted some direct information of client perceptions of it and its key competitors. It also wanted to check the progress of its strategic plans and marketing in the marketplace and from that get an indication of how it was traveling in implementing its strategic vision.

It engaged a third party to conduct a competitive positioning study.

The first step in the process was a telephone survey developed and designed to hone in on the perceptions of intermediaries and borrowers as two key segments of the firm's market. The survey was presented to a sample of both existing and potential clients from various asset groups.

The interview began with a qualitative blind study. The questions asked respondents to do the following:

• Identify the most important factors in deciding where to borrow.
• Define selection criteria in terms of behavior and the consequences of the decision.
• Nominate which lender they considered to be the market leader in terms of each selection criteria.

The second half of the interview asked each respondent for their perceptions of the client firm, addressing both the factors discussed in the first half of the interview and the strategic marketing undertaken by the firm.

There were some surprise results from the survey, which showed that no one lender met all the criteria for choosing a lender.

While the client firm came out as leading the market in terms of the most important selection criteria, it was viewed much less favorably against other important factors. The firm received very favorable feedback about brand image and service; however, these factors were relatively unimportant to potential clients when deciding who to approach for finance.

The two segments of the market addressed in the study seemed unaware of the firm's current focus in the marketplace, possibly due to a series of recent acquisitions and some resulting restructuring.

The analysis pointed to opportunity to build on the firm's reputation by improving communication with the market. As a result, the firm adopted a strategy, which saw a single point of contact model adopted.

A follow-up study one year later indicated significant progress had been made.¹²

FAROUT Summary

Figure 7.4 Competitive positioning analysis FAROUT summary

Future orientation—Medium to high. Competitive positioning analysis identifies future strategies to improve competitive position.

Accuracy—Medium to high. Accuracy of the final strategies drawn from the analysis will depend on the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the information gathered. This may range from medium to high, depending on circumstances. Statistical research and publicly available financial information should increase accuracy. Primary information or word of mouth sources may be less accurate.

Resource efficiency—Medium to high. Where the work of gathering information is divided up into manageable portions, the process should not be a drain on the firm's resources.

Objectivity—Medium to high. The objectivity of the final strategies drawn from the analysis may be compromised by internal biases if carried out by firm staff. Objectivity should be higher where a third party is involved in the analysis.

Usefulness—High. Competitive positioning analysis should provide practical insights about the nature of an industry or market and opportunities available in it.

Timeliness—Medium. The implementation of competitive positioning analysis should be a simple process once the project has been designed.

Related Tools and Techniques

• BCG growth/share portfolio matrix
• Benchmarking
• Competitor analysis
• Customer segmentation analysis
• Financial ratio and statement analysis
• GE business screen
• Industry analysis
• Product line analysis
• Supply chain analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Value chain analysis

References

Aaker, D. (2001). Developing Business Strategies, 6th edition. New York, NY: Wiley.

Brown, L. (1990). Competitive Marketing Strategy. Melbourne: Nelson.

Fleisher, C.S, and Bensoussan, B. E. (2003). Strategic and Competitive Analysis. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J.

Gantz Wiley Research. "Competitive Positioning Study Capital Mortgage Lender," www.gantzwiley.com. Accessed June, 2006.

Ghemawat, P. (1999). Strategy and the Business Landscape: Text and Cases. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Louden, T.L (1991). "Take time out for competitive positioning," Health Industry Today, March issue.

Trout, J. (1969). "'Positioning' is a game people play in today's me-too marketplace," Industrial Marketing, 54(6), pp. 51–55.

Endnotes

¹ Trout, J. (1969).

² Brown, L. (1990).

³ See Fleisher and Bensoussan (2003), Chapter 4.

⁴ See Fleisher and Bensoussan (2003), Chapter 5.

⁵ Louden, T.L. (1991).

⁶ Ghemawat, P. (1999).

⁷ See Fleisher and Bensoussan (2003), Chapter 9.

⁸ Aaker, D. (2001).

⁹ See Fleisher and Bensoussan (2003), Chapter 8.

¹⁰ See Fleisher and Bensoussan (2003), Chapter 11.

¹¹ Louden, T.L. (1991).

¹² Adapted from "Competitive Positioning Study Capital Mortgage Lender," published by Gantz Wiley Research.