The CMO Survey has been tracking company growth strategies for four years. Respondents allocate 100 points among four well-known growth strategies to reflect what their companies have done over the last year and plan to do in the next year.
The four growth strategies are differentiated on two dimensions. The first dimension is whether the company is growing by deepening purchases from current customers or entering new markets (new from the standpoint of the company’s portfolio). The second dimension is whether the company is growing by trying to sell more of its current products and/or services or by offering new products and/or services. These two dimensions produce a 2×2 matrix of growth strategies (Table 1) called the Ansoff Growth Matrix.
Table 1. Types of Growth Strategies
Table 2 shows the percent of company expenditures for each strategy for the past 12 months and for the next 12 months. Most companies continue to grow through market penetration. This low-risk strategy usually yields more certain but lower returns. However, this number is expected to decrease. Companies are expected to take on more risk by increasing use of the remaining three growth strategies with an emphasis on product/service development (developing new offerings for existing markets) and diversification (targeting new markets with new offerings).
