Frontal Attack

Definition: The Frontal Attack is the marketing strategy adopted by the challenger firm and is intended to have a head on attack on the competitor by matching him in all the aspects Viz, product, price, place, promotion.

It is assumed that in order to have an effective frontal attack the challenger must have three times more Fire Power than the opponent. Now the question arises, that, what is the Fire Power in marketing? The price and the quality of a product, sales effort, advertising effort, service, effort are some of the fire powers that a challenger must be efficient in to win over the opponent.

The frontal attack strategy is suitable for a challenger only when the market is relatively homogenous, and a competitor has fewer resources to retaliate. Also, the brand equity is low, and the products are poorly differentiated. Therefore, the loyalty of customer towards the products is also low.

A company can follow any of the following attacks:

• Pure Attack, wherein the challenger matches with all the aspects of the competitor Viz, product, price, place, promotion.
• Limited Frontal Attack, wherein the challenger attacks on the specific customer segments.
• Price-based Frontal Attack, wherein the challenger matches with all the attributes of a competitor’s product.
• Research and Development Attack, wherein the challenger invests a huge amount in the research activities to match with the competitors’ innovations.

The challenger must carefully scrutinize all the strengths and weaknesses of a competitor and attack on that element of an opponent for which he will not be able to defend himself or attack back. HUL, P&G, ITC are some big players in FMCG that launch the frontal attack on each other.