Imitative Strategy - Definition & Meaning

Published in Marketing and Strategy Terms by MBA Skool Team

What is Imitative Strategy?

Imitative strategy is the strategy adopted by companies to imitate or copy an existing model of a company and implement its services, business ideas, revenue model etc. Imitative strategy helps a company save money on research and development, new product development etc, and just introduce a similar product with a different brand name, marketing strategy etc. Imitation is following someone or implementing model of someone else.


If company is following innovation strategy a lot of money is spent on research and development for producing a new product altogether. Innovation strategy has also lot of risk involved in it as product developed may become a failure in market since its inception leading to huge loses to company following it. These disadvantages can be eliminated if company is following imitative strategy. Most of the famous companies today are following imitative strategy as they have excelled in the existing market of product and initial innovator is far behind in terms of competition and innovation in imitative strategy. So generally an imitative firm observes an innovator’s product and its success rate in market. If they see potential in innovators product and have a look at market leader and competition in the market. Then firm employing imitative strategy makes an entry into that market thus mitigating the risk of failure.


Imitative firm generally follow re-engineering process and employ funds in research and development of re-engineering of innovative product. Also imitative firm generally employ innovation in that product during re-engineering process thus creating differentiating factor from existing competitors and gaining market share from existing customer base. Also sometimes imitative firm follow marketing strategy of market leader and try to create some differentiation in it. Employing imitative strategy gives fixed goals for research and development team and they don’t have to think from scratch. Also point of entry in market by imitative firm varies from small time period like 1 year to large time period as 5 years. Imitative strategies are commonly followed by fashion products and electronics products like mobile phones, tablets etc.

Hence, this concludes the definition of Imitative Strategy along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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