Companies´ Reactions to Rival´ s Actions in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods Industry : Examples of companies in the cosmetics goods industry

Abstract: Date:                             June 8th, 2012 Course:                          EFO 705 Master Thesis Course Program:                       International Marketing Authors:                        Jolita Kilinskaite (jke11003), Simone Kolar (skr11003) Title: Companies´ Reactions to Rival´ s Actions in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Industry-  Examples of companies in the cosmetics goods industry   Research Question: How do companies in the FMCG industry react to rivals actions?   Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze how companies react to rival´s actions   Method: The thesis is based on secondary research and primary research. The primary research is based on semi-structured interview processes and critical incidents   Target audience: Companies in the FMCG industry, Academics and Teachers in the field of Strategy and Marketing who are interested in competitive    marketing strategies in the FMCG industry   Keywords: Differentiation strategy, Imitation Strategy, Co-opetition, Rival´s actions, FMCG industry, Competition, Critical incidents   Conclusion: This master thesis concentrates in theory on three common reaction strategies in marketing, which are defined as differentiation, limitation, and co-opetition and describes possible rival´s actions, the roots that cause certain reaction strategies. Based on the literature, interviews were conducted with the marketing managers from four different companies in the cosmetics goods industry, in order to prove whether the interviewed managers support the defined reaction strategies. The result was a support for the differentiation and imitation strategy. However, co-opetition was only used by one of the companies and is therefore seen as a less important strategy, at least in the marketing departments of the         interviewed companies.