In a mature market, more market share means more possible revenue. The bigger the slice of the pie the more profit potential. Therefore weaker firms will always look to bridge the gap between them and the firms with more significant market share.
Along with the obvious ways of increasing market share (being able to charge a lower price, producing more, innovation) there are a couple of more direct approaches that can help firms broaden their customer base and ultimately be able to compete with high-market share companies:
Cooperation
Firms might look to cooperate by establishing partnerships. Agreements such as marketing partnerships should help them reach a wider audience. A common example is the partnership between compatible brands to distribute exclusively through a common retailer. Not only the "co-promotion" is advantageous to each firm but doing so is much more profitable then individually bargaining with other powerful retail chains.
Acquiring weaker competitors
The most direct approach to gain market share is is to acquire competitors. Theoretically this could be done indefinitely, even to the point of reaching monopoly. The transaction could be either a merger or a simple acquisition, though preserving the acquired firm's structure should be a safer method to retain its customer base.
On the other end, market leaders will always look to preserve their dominance and eliminate the threat of weaker firms cooperating or merging.
Divide and Conquer
The concept of "Dividing and Conquering" dates back to ancient times, being a long established policy used in politics. It is used to maintain control over opponents and it consists of breaking any form of alliance between them and "conquering" them individually. It can certainly have applications to market leaders.
Breaking cooperation commitments among competitors
Breaking any form of partnership/cooperation between one's opponents is tough, especially when they are rational and know they are better off cooperating. But being a market leader can be used here as an advantage. Smaller firms will often prefer to cooperate with powerful companies just because they can reach a wider audience. Therefore their "alliance" could be broken by offering to partner with them individually, meaning market leaders should establish separate partnerships deals with each (or at least the majority) of their competitors.
Acquiring the closest competitors
In order to prevent their competitors from growing/uniting, powerful firms could too look into acquiring them. It is essential though that the closest competitors should be a priority(just because they have the highest market share and they present the biggest threat). The dominance will be secured after reaching more than 50% market share since, even if they unite, the competitors won't be able to achieve 50%.
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