In the current climate, competition is intensifying with many players fighting over a shrinking customer base. With that said, it’s important for businesses to take stock and develop a strategic move that will set them apart from the competition. The Blue Ocean Strategy, developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, offers a comprehensive framework for businesses to break out of the status quo and move into uncontested market space.
We’ve laid out the 6 steps that will help to guide your business towards a commercially compelling Blue Ocean Strategy.
Alternative Industries
Assess alternative industries to your own, those that would provide a different ‘means’ to the same ‘end’ for your buyers, and map out the key factors that lead buyers to trade across those alternative industries. Elevate the most critical factors, create new value-add factors and eliminate or reduce all other factors to create a Blue Ocean of new market space.
Strategic Group
Most businesses focus on improving their competitive position within a strategic group (e.g. Luxury vs. Economy). To develop a Blue Ocean Strategy, you should understand which factors determine your buyers’ decisions to trade up or down from one strategic group to another. Blurring the lines between strategic groupscould lead to novel feature sets that appeal to a wider customer base.
Buyer Group
Competitors typically centre around a common target buyer. However, there is a chain of “buyers” who are directly or indirectly involved in the buying decision (i.e. Distributors, Purchasers, Influencers, and End-users). These buyer groups could hold different views on the value proposition of your product or service. If you shift your focus onto a different buyer group (e.g. Purchaser vs. End-user), you could unlock new value!
Scope of Product or Service Offering
Untapped value is often hidden in complementary products and services. The key is to define the total solution buyers seek when they choose a product or service. A simple way to do so is to think about what happens before, during, and after your product or service is used. At this checkpoint, ask yourself, can you incorporate any of these complementary products or services into your business offerings?
Functional – Emotional Orientation
The appeal of most products or services is governed by its matter-of-fact functional attributes or by evoking an emotional response from the buyer. When businesses are willing to challenge their functional-emotional brand appeal, they often find new market space.
Trends Over Time
How will a persistent trend change the value to your customers and impact your company’s business model? As you look to future product/service development, question whether your efforts will actively shape your industry trends or will simply follow suit after the trendsetters.
At Millennial Partners, we help to build your strategic vision and can elevate your Go-to-Market Strategy. Our specialist consultants provide guidance by assessing current strategies and their limitations and formulating new approaches that better serve the business through greater alignment with the vision, mission, finances, and resources.
Should you have any questions and or would like some focused professional advice, please don’t hesitate to reach out via our e-mail at info@millennial.ae.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]