Boxing up or Boxed in?: A Short History of the Boston Consulting Group Share/ Growth Matrix

This paper looks critically at the history, mainly from public sources1, of the development of the Market Share/Market Growth matrix by the Boston Consulting Group and its popularization in both the practitioner and academic domains. The application of the “Boston Box” became a powerful means of simplifying and “boxing up” complex issues of marketing strategy. However, of particular interest is the question of whether this central technique in any marketing strategy analysis of the seventies or eighties also bred its own form of “marketing myopia” and “boxed in” strategic discussions to a limited set of options and prescriptions. A short survey of marketing lecturers in the UK was also conducted to establish the current state of undergraduate teaching of the “Boston Box” itself, which suggests that there are still considerable areas of concern in terms of the teaching of such techniques.