market follower

[Damir]

Market follower
Definition in Longman Business English Dicitionary:
"a company or product which is not one of the main ones in a particular market and does not have a large share of the market"
In Market Leader (Intermediate) coursebook:
"the market follower is the second best-selling product or brand"

The ideas are completely different.
Could you clarify the actual use of this term?
Thank you.

[fluffyhamster]

Admittedly the Market Leader definition does make a 'market follower' sound like it is a more major item than the Longman definition, and one of a kind (i.e. in second place) rather than one of potentially many; but the ML definition could be being a little too precise ('the second best selling product' only? Couldn't there be a whole gaggle of market followers, as the Longman definition suggests?)?

You could do a search to see if 'market follower' is usually "one only" ('THE market follower') or one of a group ('A market follower'; 'the market followerS'; 'a number of the market followerS' etc), but if the usage is split/there is a sizeable minority of usages that conflict with the possible majority one, then who can really say which definition is the correct one?

The most important thing is probably just that there is one leading brand, and every other brand isn't that one (that is, you can say A is the leading brand and B and C aren't - they're the second and third leading brands - rather than worry if only B is THE market follower).

How do these rewrites of the definitions grab you? The Longman: a company or product which is one of the main ones in a particular market, but not the leading one.

The ML: the market follower is not the leading/best-selling product or brand.

Hopefully somebody familar with the terminology that business people actually prefer to use (maybe they aren't all into the lingo as much as these sorts of dictionaries suggest!) will reply soon.

[tigertiger]

I agree with Fluffy's take.
You need to look at what a market leader is and this is the clincher.

There can only be one company/product in the lead, but many can follow.

[sbourque]

Here's a completely different definition, from when I taught international business a few years back. A "market follower" is a company that goes international in order to follow its customers (market). For example, if a maker of auto parts in the U.S. sold most of its product to Chrysler, it would set up a facility in Germany following the DaimlerChrysler merger, in order to avoid losing its Chrysler business to local German companies. I also heard companies described as "market followers" if they took their cues from the market leaders. I worked for a medium-sized bank outside New York, and we would see what Citi and Morgan did, (like raise the prime rate) and then, a day later, do the same.

I don't recall ever hearing a product described as a "market follower", however.

[tigertiger]

Here's a completely different definition, from when I taught international business a few years back. A "market follower" is a company that goes international in order to follow its customers (market).

I would be inclined to say 'this company is following the market'

I also heard companies described as "market followers" if they took their cues from the market leaders. I worked for a medium-sized bank outside New York, and we would see what Citi and Morgan did, (like raise the prime rate) and then, a day later, do the same.

Agree, this is another way of follwing the market leader.

I don't recall ever hearing a product described as a "market follower", however.

Agree. A product can be a market leader. The non leading product could be described as an 'also ran'. This is a reference to horse racing.