Where does penetration collide?

In marketing and strategy, penetration is the share of a target market that already buys a product, and, as a lever of growth, the effort to raise that share by selling more of an existing product into an existing market. Penetration pricing sets a deliberately low introductory price to win volume and market share quickly, in contrast to a skimming price. Ansoff's 1957 Strategies for diversification placed market penetration as one cell of a product and market growth grid, the existing product in the existing market, while Spann, Fischer, and Tellis's 2015 study classified penetration among the dynamic pricing paths actually observed for new products. The referent is a commercial quantity, a rate of adoption within a defined market, not a distance into a material, an authorised test of a system, or the reach of an institution into a society.[1][2]

Unit

A share of a target market that buys a product, as a penetration rate

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Estimated from sales and survey data as the percentage of the target market that has bought, and tracked over time against price and distribution

In physics and materials science, the penetration depth is the distance a wave, field, or particle reaches into a material before its intensity falls by a factor of 1/e, or before a projectile is arrested. In electromagnetics it is the skin depth to which an alternating field enters a conductor, and in a superconductor it is the London penetration depth to which an applied magnetic field decays inside the sample. F. London and H. London's 1935 The electromagnetic equations of the supraconductor derived that characteristic length from the electrodynamics of the superconducting state. The referent is a physical length set by the material and the frequency, measured in metres, and it is unrelated to a market share, a security test, or the reach of a state.[3]

Unit

A characteristic length of decay or arrest inside a material, in metres

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Computed from conductivity and frequency for the skin depth, or inferred from magnetic response for the superconducting case, and reported as a length

In political sociology and development studies, penetration is the reach of an institution, above all the state or the market, into the everyday life of a society or territory. A state with deep penetration can enforce its decisions, collect taxes, and register its population across the whole domain it claims, what Michael Mann called infrastructural power, while a weakly penetrating state governs mainly the capital and leaves the periphery to other authorities. Mann's 1984 The autonomous power of the state distinguished this capacity to work through society from mere power exercised over it. The referent is the depth of institutional reach into social life, judged by administrative capacity and presence, not a length in a material, a commercial share, or a test of a computer.[4]

Unit

The depth of an institution's reach into everyday social life

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Gauged by indicators of administrative reach, such as tax collection, registration, and the presence of state or market institutions across a territory