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Niche
Marketing: When You Should Play The "Me Too" Game
Sometimes your competitor
will make a bold move and carve out a new niche, or repositions itself
in a way that really threatens your own position.
While it is always better
to be first and to be the big fish in your own pond, life just doesn’t
always go our way. The other guys are smart too and come up with their
own ideas. That’s why business can often be a game of keeping up.
This is what happened to
Ford and Daimler-Chrysler after General Motors came out with employee
pricing as a way to stimulate car sales in the U.S. Until then, employee
pricing had been a cherished benefit given only to employees.
But when GM made this
pricing structure available to everyone, a massive surge in new car
buying began. And all of it was moving in the direction of GM.
Ford and Daimler-Chrysler
were faced with a dilemma. GM was taking all the new car sales for
American-made cars away from them. Should they roll out their own
employee pricing too and sacrifice their profit margins, or should they
hold fast and wait until GM ended their program? It was a game of
chicken on a corporate scale.
What happened was what
always happens in the car business, they copied GM’s idea. They said,
“we have employee pricing too.” Soon all three of the major American car
makers were offering employee pricing. GM was no longer unique and no
longer had the lion’s share of new car sales.
All three companies
benefited from the surge in new car buying, although GM’s sales dipped
somewhat from when they were the only one offering these low prices.
Ford and Daimler turned what had been a unique selling proposition for
GM into a category that benefited them all.
Categories are funny
things. There is still a leader of the pack, but categories enable all
the players to benefit. They are rising tides that float all the boats.
No one likes to play “me
too” but sometimes it can be a very effective marketing strategy when
your competitor has gotten the jump on you. When you look around and see
that the other guy has carved out a niche and you can’t afford to be
left out, the “me too” game allows you to steal some of their thunder …
and profits.
COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles
Brown. All rights reserved.
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