Describing Business Strategy, Markets and Products - Business English Lesson

Hi, I’m Liam. Welcome to Oxford Online English! 

In this business English lesson, you’ll  learn to talk about marketing strategies  

and corporate competition. You’ll see lots  of useful vocabulary and collocations you  

can use to talk about business strategy. You’ll learn useful language to talk  

about losing market share, entering  a new market, launching new products,  

and staying competitive in an evolving market.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us for  this conference call, wherever you might happen  

to be in the world! If you don’t know, my name’s  Dimitri, and I lead the marketing department.  

I’m not sure that you’re aware, but our European  business has not been doing well in the last  

year or so. In particular, we’ve been losing  market share to our rivals. A Korean company,  

Neidon, entered the European market three  years ago, and have adopted an aggressive  

pricing strategy, which is putting pressure on  our revenues. Additionally, a German start-up,  

called Hammer, have expanded their market  share in Germany, Austria and Switzerland,  

partially at our expense. It’s clear that  we need to respond to these market forces,  

and I’d like to start thinking about  our options during this meeting. 

In this presentation, you heard some phrases based  on the word ‘market’. Let’s look at a few of them. 

Imagine that you want to explain the meaning of  these phrases in English. What would you say? 

If you’re losing market share, then your  business has a smaller proportion of  

the available customers. The phrase in  sentence two has the opposite meaning;  

if you expand your market share, you reach  a higher proportion of potential customers.

You can also gain market share,  which has the same meaning. 

‘Market forces’ – you can also say ‘market  pressures’ – describes the conditions in a market,  

and how they affect company  behaviour and strategy.

For example, a market in a particular field,  

or a particular area, might get more or  less competitive with time. Consumers there  

might get richer or poorer. These are examples of  market forces which businesses need to adapt to. 

Generally, you can improve your English to  talk about these topics by paying attention  

to *collocations*. A collocation is when  you use words in a specific combination.

‘Expand your market share’ is a collocation.  You might know all these words individually,  

but could you use them together? With  collocations, you need to learn the  

combination of words as a single block, so that  you can use them together without thinking.

We recommend going back to the presentation text  and trying to find more useful collocations. Do  

the same with the other presentation texts  which you’ll see in the rest of this lesson!

You’re about to hear the  presentation for part two.  

Don’t forget to listen out for  collocations. In the presentation,  

there are three new collocations with the  word ‘market’. Try to find them as you listen! 

I’d like to discuss an idea which  has been floating around lately,  

and explain why I don’t think it’s a solution  to our problems. I’m talking about China;  

I’ve heard from many of you that we should try to  enter the Chinese market, but I don’t think this  

is a good strategic move for us right now. First  of all, the regulatory barriers to entry are high.  

Secondly, there’s already fierce competition,  from both local and international companies.  

Finally, the cost of getting established  in a new market can be large, and while  

we’re financially solid, we don’t have so much  free cash flow, so we’d have to take on debt.  

Instead, I think we should focus  on our North American presence,  

where we’re already in a strong market  position and the competition is less intense. 

Did you hear the collocations with  the word ‘market’? Here they are. 

What does ‘getting established’ mean? ‘Established’ means something like ‘stable’ or  

‘comfortable’. If you get  established in a new market,  

you reach a position where your business is  comfortable, and you’re not fighting for survival. 

There were also several other useful phrases  in the presentation. Let’s look at a few. 

Can you remember the missing words? Remember  that you can go back and listen to the  

presentation again if you want! Here are the answers. 

‘Move’ here means something like  ‘decision’ or ‘plan’. It’s a noun.

If something is a good decision, you can  describe it as a ‘good move’ or a ‘smart move’. 

If you want to enter a new market, there  will usually be some barriers to entry.  

These could be regulatory – laws and rules  which it is difficult or expensive to follow.  

They could be cultural – maybe there isn’t much  demand for your product in some countries or  

cultures. They could be financial – maybe you need  to invest heavily to start a new operation. If the  

barriers to entry are high, then it’s especially  difficult to get established in a new market. 

There are many words which you can  combine with the word ‘competition’.  

In the presentation, you also  heard ‘intense competition’.

Here’s a task: go to a good online  dictionary – we recommend Longman or  

Lexico – and find three more adjectives which  can collocate with the word ‘competition’.  

If your English is intermediate level or  higher, focusing on collocations is often a  

better way to improve your vocabulary, rather than  spending all your time learning individual words.

Again, when you listen to the presentation, try  to find new collocations with the word ‘market’.  

There are three to find. 

Another way that we might compensate  for the decline in our European business  

is by bringing new product lines to market, both  in Europe and elsewhere. This could help us to  

expand our customer base and claw back some of  the market share we’ve lost in recent years.  

Additionally, to cut down on travel expenses,  we’ve been retraining our sales teams  

so that they can work remotely. We  started work on this very early,  

which we hope will give us a competitive edge over  other firms that still rely on face-to-face sales.  

Overall, our strategic vision for the next  five to ten years is to take a more global,  

less Europe-centric approach. That doesn’t  mean we’ll be neglecting our European business,  

but we’ll be focusing more on emerging markets,  and trying to build a dominant position there. 

Here are the three new collocations with ‘market’. 

‘Claw back’ is an interesting verb. Do  you know what it means, or can you guess? 

‘Claw back’ means to fight to get  back something which you lost. 

Now, to practise the other language  you heard, look at some questions. 

Pause the video, and try to make answers to these  three questions. Make sure your answers are full  

sentences, and make them as detailed as possible.  Write them down, or say them out loud, or do both! 

Ready? Could you do it? 

Of course, there’s more than one way to  answer, but let’s look at some sample answers.

You could say: ‘A company can expand its  customer base by launching new products,  

entering new regional markets, or attracting  new customers through advertising.’ 

You could say: ‘A company can gain a  competitive edge by having a superior product,  

having lower prices, or by offering  better customer service and support.’ 

You could say: ‘In my country,  there’s a restaurant chain  

called Goody’s that have a dominant  position in the fast food market.  

It’s one of the few countries where MacDonald’s  haven’t been able to gain much market share.’ 

If you found it difficult to answer the three  questions yourself, use our answers as templates.  

Use the sentence structures we used, and  change the details to use your own ideas.

Also, just practising your answer once  

might not be enough! Say your answer out loud  several times, until you can do it fluently.

Let’s move on to our last section. 

As before, try to find new collocations  with the word ‘market’ in the presentation.  

This time, there are three to find. 

So far, we’ve focused more on challenges which  we’re currently facing, but there’s plenty of good  

news, too. In Latin America, we are in a dominant  position, with two of our largest competitors  

announcing recently that they’re planning to  get out of the market, which is great news for  

us and should allow us to consolidate our position  further. However, we don’t want to get complacent.  

We have a first mover advantage in most of  Latin America, but other companies will notice  

our success and try to move in. One thing I’d  like our product teams to start thinking about  

is how to keep our pricing competitive and  make it difficult for any new market entrants.  

We should also be looking at long  term trends in South America,  

and make strategic decisions that reflect the  changing market conditions across the continent. 

Did you find the new collocations? Here they are. In part two, you heard a collocation which  

means the opposite of ‘get out of  the market’. Do you remember it? 

The opposite is ‘enter the market’,  as in ‘enter the Chinese market’,  

‘enter the Brazilian market’, and so on.

Let’s look at some more useful phrases you  heard. Can you remember the missing words here? 

Can you remember? Pause the video  if you need more time to think. 

Ready? Here are the answers. 

If you consolidate something, you  make it stronger and more stable. 

‘First mover advantage’ means the benefits you  get from being first to enter a new market,  

or launch a new product. For some  time, you have no competition,  

because you were faster than your rivals. 

‘Move in’ here has the direct meaning of entering  a new market, but it has a secondary meaning, too:  

it has the idea of trying to  take market share and customers. 

That’s all for this lesson, but there’s  a lot of information and vocabulary here.  

We recommend that you go through the presentations  again and find new words and phrases to learn.

Thanks for watching!

See you next time!