Success factors of profitable businesses in declining industries

The goal of the thesis is to present as well as challenge the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) as an option for businesses to stay sustainably successful in declining industries. The motivation to write about this topic aroused through the realization that not only most of the current theory focuses on growing industries but also on end-game strategies for declining industries, rather than also emphasizing on declining industries and Blue Oceans. In order to reach the goal of the thesis, a literature review combined with highly-valuable expert interviews helped the author to find the necessary answers to his questions. The structure of the thesis is supposed to help the reader to understand the relevance of BOS. For that, it is necessary to get a sound understanding of declining industries, generic strategies for mature and declining markets, the factors affecting the profitability and strategy of firms, but also end-game strategies for declining industries. The literature review shows that BOS can be seen as partly valid by certain aspects. The theory by Kim and Mauborgne still has several weak points that are criticised by other researchers. A company that plans to use the Blue Ocean Strategy must be aware that the creation of Blue Oceans is a dynamic process and not a single task of implementing a strategy.