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Eight weeks. That’s all that separated the launch of Apple’s revolutionary iPhone, on June 29, 2007, and Motorola’s next-generation Razr2 (pronounced Razr Squared) cellular telephone, on August 24. Before unveiling the successor to the Razr, which PC World magazine in 2005 ranked 12th on a list of the 50 greatest gadgets of the past 50 years, Motorola’s top management team was more worried than usual. With sales of the American communication giant’s other cellular telephones tapering off, the company’s fate rested squarely on the Razr2. Moreover, senior executives like chairman and CEO Edward J. Zander wondered if the iPhone had changed the competitive dynamics of the market in ways they hadn’t foreseen. Had the iPhone created a new niche or would it take the Razr2 head-on? How much extra could they charge for the Razr2’s new features? Should Motorola play up the Razr2’s noise-filtering technology, which it had patented? The executives couldn’t wait for the results of focus group sessions or sample surveys. They needed a fast, yet reliable way of capturing changes that were emerging in the market so they could finalize strategy quickly.
Like Motorola, most companies have to build fresh competitive advantages and destroy others’ advantages faster than they used to. As innovation pervades the value chain, they must migrate quickly from one competitive position to another, creating new ones, depreciating old ones, and matching rivals’. The process is disorderly and unstable. Senior executives desperately need new tools to help them systematically analyze their own and other players’ competitive positions in hypercompetitive markets.
One way to do that is to track the relationship between prices and a product’s key benefit over time. However, it isn’t easy to come to grips with either benefits or prices. Most customers are unable to identify the features that determine the prices they are willing to pay for products or services, according to a 2004 survey by Strativity, a global research and consulting firm. Worse, 50% of salespeople don’t know what attributes justify the prices of the products and services they sell.
If customers don’t know what they’re paying for, and managers don’t know what they’re charging for, it’s almost impossible for companies to identify their competitive positions. Whenever I’ve asked senior executives to map the positions of their company’s brands and those of key rivals, we end up confused and dismayed. Different executives place their firm’s offerings in different spots on a price-benefit map; few know the primary benefit their product offers; and they all overestimate the benefits of their own offerings while underestimating those of rivals. The lack of understanding about competitive positions is palpable in industries such as consumer electronics, where the number of features makes comparisons complicated; in markets like computer hardware, where technologies and strategies change all the time; and when products, such as insurance policies, are intangible.
Whenever I’ve asked senior executives to map the positions of their company’s brands and those of key rivals, we end up confused and dismayed.
Seven years ago, I came up with a way companies could capture competitive positions graphically to serve as the basis for strategy discussions. Drawn by using simple statistical analysis, a price-benefit positioning map provides insights into the relationship between prices and benefits, and tracks how competitive positions change over time. Executives can use the tool to benchmark themselves against rivals, dissect competitors’ strategies, and forecast a market’s future, as we shall see in the following pages. By creating an accurate map of the competitive landscape, companies can also get everyone in the organization on the same page. During my consulting and research work, I have applied this tool in more than 30 industries, including automobiles, advanced materials, artificial sweeteners, cellular telephones, restaurants, retailing, turbines, tires, motorcycles, and ships. Let me show you how to create and read a positioning map.
Drawing Positioning Maps
In its simplest form, a price-benefit positioning map shows the relationship between the primary benefit that a product provides to customers and the prices of all the products in a given market. Creating such a map involves three steps.
Define the market.
To draw a meaningful map, you must specify the boundaries of the market in which you’re interested. First, identify the consumer needs you wish to understand. You should cast a wide net for products and services that satisfy those needs, so you aren’t blindsided by fresh entrants, new technologies, or unusual offerings that take care of those needs. Second, choose the country or region you wish to study. It’s best to limit the geographic scope of the analysis if customers, competitors, or the way products are used differ widely across borders. Finally, decide if you want to track the entire market for a product or only a specific segment, if you wish to explore the retail or wholesale market, and if you’re going to track products or brands. You can create different maps by changing these frames of analysis.
Choose the price and determine the primary benefit.
Once you’ve defined the market, you need to specify the scope of your analysis of prices. You have implicitly decided whether to study retail or wholesale prices when you chose which market to focus on, but you must also consider other pricing parameters. You must choose whether to compare initial prices or prices that include life cycle costs, prices with transaction costs or without them, and the prices of unbundled or bundled offers. These choices depend on the yardstick that customers use in making purchasing decisions in the market under study. Remember to be consistent about the price definition you use while gathering data. We suggest reading the complete article via hbr.org
Want to increase the sustainability of your growth initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.
Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. Arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective innovation strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.
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