The paper highlights the importance of the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) in the era of cut-throat competition among companies. 25 years ago, the Indian government through its policy of liberalization and globalization paved the way for foreign companies to enter Indian market which imposed the challenge of increased competition. Today, the Indian companies face universal competition on the one hand, and a pressure to offer a wide range of products at economical price, on the other. This has resulted in decreasing profitable growth and companies are driven to compete primarily on cost. But only cost negotiation is not sufficient to outstay and compete in the global marketplace. It is time for companies to look into value innovation by adopting new marketing concepts like BOS. In this paper, the author analyzes the BOS in the Indian branded sesame oil industry.

A quick look at the corporate situation today reveals that businesses are living in times of globalization where companies are fighting for competitive advantage, battling over market share and struggling for differentiation. In these high competitive markets, corporations are striving hard to reach or exceed their competitors. Also, a majority of the corporations today compete in mature market segments with standard market share (Chandrakala and Susheela Devi, 2013). In mature markets, it is easier to gain rivals’ market share rather than attempt at enlarging the demand. But gaining competitors’ market share is very costly and results in either price war or costly promotion activities. This most common market form is called ‘red ocean’ due to the bloody competition between the corporations. Thus in the overcrowded industries, competing head-to-head results in rivals’ fighting over a dwindling profit pool. Therefore, companies which compete within such red oceans are unlikely to create profitable growth in the future (Cirjevskis et al., 2011). In this prevailing scenario, there is an emerging concept in strategic management directed at finding new business and value propositions. That new concept is termed as Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) by Kim and Mauborgne, from INSEAD, Fontainebleau. They developed the BOS-framework which comprises a set of tools on the basis of ex-post studies of over 150 cases from 30 industries. Based on their research, they insist that companies can succeed not by battling competitors, but rather by creating ‘blue oceans’ of uncontested market space and making the competition irrelevant. Thus, BOS says, “Don’t Compete with Rivals—Make Them Irrelevant”. If one is to launch a business with a BOS and offering services that were not previously offered, there is an opportunity to create whole new demand (Kim and Mauborgne, 2004b). The creators of blue oceans, surprisingly, did not use the competition as their benchmark. Instead, they follow a different strategic logic that is called ‘value innovation’. Value innovation is the cornerstone of BOS which is achieved via the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost (Kim and Mauborgne, 2004b).

Business Strategy, Intuition, Blue Oceans, Indian Sesame Oil Industry, Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS), Analysis.