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Strategic Management MGT603

Lesson 27

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP (BCG) MATRIX

Learning objective

After understanding this chapter you are able to understand BCG and IE matrices and also understand

how to prepare these matrices for any organization and what its practical implementation in various

organizations.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a management consulting firm founded by Harvard

Business School alum Bruce Henderson in 1963. The growth-share matrix is a chart created by group

in 1970 to help corporation analyze their business units or product lines, and decide where to allocate

cash. It was popular for two decades, and is still used as an analytical tool.

To use the chart, corporate analysts would plot a scatter graph of their business units, ranking their

relative market shares and the growth rates of their respective industries. This led to a categorization of

four different types of businesses:

Cash cows Units with high market share in a slow-growing industry. These units typically generate

cash in excess of the amount of cash needed to maintain the business. They are regarded as staid

and boring, in a "mature" market, and every corporation would be thrilled to own as many as

possible. They are to be "milked" continuously with as little investment as possible, since such

investment would be wasted in an industry with low growth.

Dogs More charitably called pets, units with low market share in a mature, slow-growing industry.

These units typically "break even", generating barely enough cash to maintain the business's market

share. Though owning a break-even unit provides the social benefit of providing jobs and possible

synergies that assist other business units, from an accounting point of view such a unit is worthless,

not generating cash for the company. They depress a profitable company's return on assets ratio,

used by many investors to judge how well a company is being managed. Dogs, it is thought, should

be sold off.

Question marks Units with low market share in a fast-growing industry. Such business units

require large amounts of cash to grow their market share. The corporate goal must be to grow the

business to become a star. Otherwise, when the industry matures and growth slows, the unit will

fall down into the dog's category.

Stars Units with a high market share in a fast-growing industry. The hope is that stars become the

next cash cows. Sustaining the business unit's market leadership may require extra cash, but this is

worthwhile if that's what it takes for the unit to remain a leader. When growth slows, stars become

cash cows if they have been able to maintain their category leadership.

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Strategic Management MGT603

As a particular industry matures and its growth slows, all business units become either cash cows or

dogs.

The overall goal of this ranking was to help corporate analysts decide which of their business units to

fund, and how much; and which units to sell. Managers were supposed to gain perspective from this

analysis that allowed them to plan with confidence to use money generated by the cash cows to fund

the stars and, possibly, the question marks. As the BCG stated in 1970:

Only a diversified company with a balanced portfolio can use its strengths to truly capitalize on its

growth opportunities. The balanced portfolio has:

Stars whose high share and high growth assure the future;

Cash cows that supply funds for that future growth; and

Question marks to be converted into stars with the added funds.

Practical Use of the Boston Matrix

For each product or service the 'area' of the circle represents the value of its sales. The Boston Matrix

thus offers a very useful 'map' of the organization's product (or service) strengths and weaknesses (at

least in terms of current profitability) as well as the likely cash flows.

The need which prompted this idea was, indeed, that of managing cash-flow. It was reasoned that one

of the main indicators of cash generation was relative market share, and one which pointed to cash

usage was that of market growth rate.

Relative market share

This indicates likely cash generation, because the higher the share the more cash will be generated. As a

result of 'economies of scale' (a basic assumption of the Boston Matrix), it is assumed that these

earnings will grow faster the higher the share. The exact measure is the brand's share relative to its

largest competitor. Thus, if the brand had a share of 20 per cent, and the largest competitor had the

same, the ratio would be 1:1. If the largest competitor had a share of 60 per cent, however, the ratio

would be 1:3, implying that the organization's brand was in a relatively weak position. If the largest

competitor only had a share of 5 per cent, the ratio would be 4:1, implying that the brand owned was in

a relatively strong position, which might be reflected in profits and cash flow. If this technique is used

in practice, it should be noted that this scale is logarithmic, not linear.

On the other hand, exactly what is a high relative share is a matter of some debate. The best evidence is

that the most stable position (at least in FMCG markets) is for the brand leader to have a share double

that of the second brand, and treble that of the third. Brand leaders in this position tend to be very

stable - and profitable

The reason for choosing relative market share, rather than just profits, is that it carries more

information than just cash flow. It shows where the brand is positioned against its main competitors,

and indicates where it might be likely to go in the future. It can also show what type of marketing

activities might be expected to be effective.

Limitations

1. Viewing every business as a star, cash cow, dog, or question mark is overly simplistic.

2. Many businesses fall right in the middle of the BCG matrix and thus are not easily classified.

3. The BCG matrix does not reflect whether or not various divisions or their industries are growing

over time.

4. Other variables besides relative market share position and industry growth rate in sales are

important in making strategic decisions about various divisions.

Conclusion

After discussion, the BCG matrix is an important matrix regarding strategy adopted by firm. Still this

matrix concern four strategy first growth or build strategy enhance market share), second is hold

strategy (hold existing position), third Harvesting strategy (no further growth or select other

opportunity), fourth is diversity (sell out the part of business)

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