Do you often fall into this confusion: Why can some brands easily occupy the minds of consumers, while you can only struggle in the quagmire of price wars?
When milk tea shops everywhere use similar recipes and similar promotional terms to compete for customers, Heytea opens up a new competition track with its unique positioning of “inspirational tea” and artistic space aesthetics, allowing consumers to willingly pay for cups of creative milk tea; when traditional mobile phone manufacturers are still obsessed with crazy parameter competition, Apple redefines industry standards with “ecological experience” and “design philosophy”, making consumers flock to its products…
These cases all reveal to us: real competitiveness does not lie in what you do more than your competitors, but in whether you can find the value coordinate system that “only you can do”.
Why does everyone mention “differentiation”, but few people really do it?
The word “differentiation” has often appeared in the business field in recent years, and has even become a goal pursued by almost every company. But why are there so few companies that can really achieve it?
The problem lies in three cognitive blind spots:
1. “Egocentric” trap: Many companies often fall into the logical circle of “I think”, thinking that their products or services are excellent, blindly following their own ideas and prospects, but never really analyzing whether the market really needs it.
2. “Function stacking” myth: In order to attract consumers, companies tend to blindly add various functions, diluting the core value of the product and making it impossible for people to find the focus of the product.
3. “Differentiation ≠ uniqueness” misunderstanding: Many companies think that as long as the product has a unique selling point, it is differentiated, but they ignore whether these selling points can be transformed into value that consumers can perceive and truly benefit them.
So, what kind of differentiation is true differentiation?
HONIK Biz believes that true differentiation needs to meet the following three dimensions: user-perceivable, difficult for competitors to copy, and sustainable for the company. This means that companies must not only allow consumers to clearly feel the unique value of the product, but also ensure that this value is difficult for competitors to imitate and can be maintained for a long time.
To achieve such differentiation, companies must break away from the traditional “product thinking” and turn to “value ecosystem thinking”, that is, from focusing only on the functions and features of the product itself, to gradually shifting to paying more attention to the interactive relationship between the product, users, and the market. This change in thinking requires companies to start from user needs and build a complete value ecosystem so that products can maximize their value in this system.
Since differentiation is so important, how can companies find their own differentiation from competitors?
The first step is to build a “competitor profile” to gain an in-depth understanding of competitors’ product features, market positioning, marketing strategies, and other aspects, and through detailed analysis, find out their strengths and weaknesses to prepare for subsequent differentiated competition.
The second step is to draw a “competitive map” to find blank spots, clearly display the distribution of various competitors and products in the market, so as to intuitively see the market’s competitive landscape and find those blank spots that have not yet been developed. These blank spots are potential opportunities for enterprises to achieve differentiation.
The third step is to deeply analyze the “hidden advantages” of competitors. Sometimes the advantages of competitors are not obvious, but hidden in the details of products, service processes or corporate culture. Therefore, companies need to dig deep into these hidden advantages, learn from their successful experiences, and at the same time find their shortcomings in order to gain an advantageous position in differentiated competition.
Finally, how to use differentiation to open up new tracks?
This requires companies to develop systematic strategies, find blank spots in the market, and occupy them with unique values, such as:
① Redefine customer needs
Customers often buy products not for the product itself, but to complete a certain “task”. For example, consumers buy mobile phones not only to make calls and send text messages, but also to meet multiple needs such as social interaction, entertainment, and work.
Therefore, companies should deeply explore the unmet tasks of customers, use this as a starting point, and create new markets. For example, some mobile phones that focus on camera functions have captured consumers’ task needs of recording life and sharing beauty, thus standing out in the market.
② Extreme a certain dimension to create new species
Products on the market are usually in a “moderate” state, seeking a balance in price, function, quality, etc. If you dare to take a certain dimension to the extreme, you may create a new track.
For example, Xiaomi mobile phones are known for their high cost-effectiveness. It has taken the price dimension to the extreme, attracting a large number of consumers who pursue cost-effectiveness; while Apple takes excellent design and user experience as the core, and takes the design dimension to the extreme, becoming the leading brand in the high-end mobile phone market.
③ Cross-border combination to create “hybrid products”
Many innovations come from the combination of different fields. Just like smartphones, it combines multiple functions such as communication, entertainment, and office to create a new product form.
Enterprises can try to combine technologies, concepts, and models from different fields to create “hybrid products” with unique value. For example, some smart wearable devices combine health monitoring with fashion design, which not only meets consumers’ concerns about health, but also satisfies their pursuit of fashion.
In the commercial battlefield, differentiation is the key for enterprises to stand out. Only by finding true differentiation can enterprises stand in an invincible position in the fierce market competition and open up their own new track!
