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.

104
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)