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Laufer Published in International Marketing Encyclopedia

Daniel Laufer, associate professor of marketing at Sy Syms School of Business, has been published in The Wiley International Encyclopedia of Marketing, the first international, multi-volume encyclopedia of marketing. His article, "Marketing Warfare Strategies", refers to competitor-centered strategies borrowed from the field of military science and applied in a marketing context. According to Rindfleisch, advocates of this approach suggest that both marketing and the military are very similar, and both fields share “(i) two or more opposing forces; (ii) competition for a limited and valuable resource; (iii) a zero-sum orientation in which gains come at the expense of competitor losses; and (iv) defined rules of engagement in which one competitor attacks while the opposing defends.” While this approach was popular in the 1980s, in the current era of relationship marketing it has become less relevant. Also, an increased awareness of differences between business and military organizational cultures raises questions of the applicability of military strategies in a business context.