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

In this business English lesson, you’ll 

learn to talk about marketing strategies  

marketing strategies : chiến lược marketing

and corporate competition. You’ll see lots 

of useful vocabulary and collocations you  

corporate competition: cạnh tranh trong công ty

collocations: cụm từ

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,  

losing market share: đánh mất thị phần

and staying competitive in an evolving market.

staying competitive: duy trì tính cạnh tranh

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,  

In particular: đặc biệt

rivals: đối thủ

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,  

revenues: doanh thu

adopted: áp dụng
an aggressive pricing strategy: chiến dịch định giá tích cực

called Hammer, have expanded their market 

share in Germany, Austria and Switzerland,  

expanded: mở rộng

partially at our expense. It’s clear that 

we need to respond to these market forces, 

expense: chi phí

respond: phản ứng lại

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!