BCG MATRIX

WHAT IS BCG MATRIX?

Boston Consulting Groups product portfolio matrix (BCG matrix) was designed in 1970 by
Bruce. D. Henderson of Boston Consulting Group. This strategic marketing tools helps market
strategist to review portfolio of the products and decide prospectus for their investment.

BCG MATRIX PARTS-

To BCG matrix as coordinate geometry has two axis. The x axis represents market share (high to
low; left to right) and the y axis represents market growth (low to high; bottom to top). The BCG
matrix has four different type of products among the graph.
COWS- products with low market growth and high market share.
STARS- products with high market growth and high market share
QUESTION MARK- products with high market growth and low market share
DOGS- products with low market growth and low market share

BCG MATRIX OF IBM-

For my project work I have chosen IBM as the company on which I am going to do research and
make a BCG matrix.
The following table represents the data for BCG matrix sector wise
SECTOR MARKET MARKET RELATIVE MARKET REVENUE
NAME SHARE (%) SHARE OF MARKET GROWTH
LARGEST SHARE RATE
COMPETITOR
Cloud 6.57% 15.18% 0.432 12.8% 1.60 (billion)
Security
Software
Global 16.17 32.9% 0.491 7.4% 16.17
Business (billion)
Services
Cloud 7% 31% 0.225 16.5% 14.29
Services (billion)
Cognitive 45% 22% 2.045 18% 3.6 (billion)
Solutions
In the above table we have taken 4 sectors. Cloud securities market competitor is Symantec.
For the Global Business services the main market competitor is Accenture.
For the Cloud Services Sector the main competitor is AWS (Amazon Web Services).
For the Cognitive solutions industry the main competitor is Microsoft Cognitive Solutions.

THE BCG MATRIX-

BCG MATRIX
20
18
16
14
12
Axis Title

2.5 2 1.5 1 10 0.5 0

8
6
4
2
0
Axis Title

The BCG matrix shown above is the output that has been produced using excel. Hence the four
sectors of IBM have been described in accordance the following ways.
Business Services Is characterized as COWS.
Cloud security is characterized as DOGS.
Cloud Services as QUESTION MARK.
Cognitive Solutions as STARS.
( NOTE- The BCG matrix above may not look like a BCG matrix with each quadrant occupied by a single
product but using the methods that have been described in the book and Microsoft excel we have
achieved the above matrix. For convenience I have done the sector characterization in relativity to other
sectors rather than representing each quadrant with a different sector.)