Boston Matrix
The Boston Matrix, better known as the BCG Matrix, sorts your products or business units by market growth and market share into four boxes, so you can see at a glance where to invest, where to milk, and where to walk away.
A square splits into four boxes, market growth up one side and market share along the other, each product landing in one.
Reach for this when…
- You run several product lines and marketing budget gets split evenly out of habit, not evidence.
- One line feels like it's propping up the others but nobody has said so out loud.
- You need a shared, simple picture before a hard funding decision.
How to run it
- List every product line or business unit.
- Score each on market growth and your share relative to the largest competitor.
- Plot each into a quadrant: Star, Cash Cow, Question Mark, or Dog.
- Fund the Stars and use Cash Cow profits to do it.
- Decide fast on the Question Marks: back them properly or drop them.
- Be honest about the Dogs - fix, sell, or close, rather than let them drift.
A worked example
Situation. Nusrat Jahan runs Shobha Skincare, a skincare brand in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with five product ranges and a marketing budget split evenly across all of them every quarter.
Applied. Plotted on the matrix, her serum range was a clear Star, a basic moisturiser line was a Cash Cow, and two older ranges sat as Dogs quietly absorbing a fifth of the budget between them.
Result. She discontinued both Dogs, moved their budget to the serum range, and kept the moisturiser funding it. Serum revenue overtook the rest of the catalogue combined within the year.
The catch
It carries the same limitation as the BCG Matrix under a different name: market share is a poor stand-in for profit, and the matrix says nothing about how units depend on each other, so a 'Dog' that brings in customers who then buy the Star is not really a Dog. Treat it as a starting picture, not the decision itself.
Check what a Dog feeds before you cut it - it might be the reason customers find the Star.
Origin: Boston Consulting Group (Bruce Henderson)