Consequences of increased competition

 14 July 2020

Since the Internet appeared and began to become widespread and accessible, global changes started to take place in the world. And this has also in many ways affected business, goods, and services, especially available around the world, suitable for most people.

Specialists around the world began to unite in international teams, large companies began to attract professionals from any part of the planet, and the technology and methods of work began to become very unified. We can talk about the pros and cons of such changes for a long time. But let’s pay special attention to three things:

1. Many processes, products, companies, approaches started to become standardized. Hundreds of companies choose a similar design, similar services, similar prices, create similar advertising slogans. There have been more and more companies and products that are extremely difficult to distinguish;
2. Many products that used to be developed from scratch started to turn into something assembled by the company itself but using ready-made modules. This applies to websites, goods, and services. Let’s take smartphones as an example. Go to any electronics store and, without looking at the back side of them, try to distinguish them from each other. Most likely, you won’t be able to do that;
3. Huge competition and access to the best resources in any part of the world resulted in a sharp increase in the speed of development of technologies, goods, and services. As a rule, there is simply no time left to develop something completely new, as a brilliant idea can instantly become outdated and lose relevance even before being brought to release.

All that has brought about one significant change. Almost all markets have become too “crowded” for newcomers, and there is almost no room for fresh ideas. Yes, someone succeeds with huge marketing budgets and positioning, someone stands out by design, but as a rule, most products are similar. These innovations have led to a major change.

Analytics as a way to success

We touched on the topic of positioning for a reason. In the past, when there was no such a huge supply in all areas, it was enough to do something different, and it guaranteed you success. But at a certain moment, this was not enough anymore. First, it’s already difficult to come up with a fresh idea; it seems that corporations have already come up with everything possible. Secondly, even if you come up with a brilliant unique idea, and you are sure that there is a market for this idea, it will be extremely difficult to promote it in the face of huge competition, when the supply significantly exceeds or fully satisfies the demand. Hence, a deviation towards the search for more precise, subtle, specific advantages as arguments for choosing a particular product. Let’s take casinos, for example. It used to be enough to add a unique game. This was often enough. But there are already so many games as well as so many casinos that this can be extremely insufficient to achieve success. The creators of casinos and games have to fine-tune the balance, organize highly specialized promotions or contests, and launch very unusual modes. At first, the target audience of such nuanced decisions may seem extremely small and unpromising, but it is this approach that allows lots of different startups to succeed even in extremely crowded markets that could seem to have no place for new players.

The complexity of this approach certainly lies in the need for a much greater amount of knowledge to discover and create the advantages that will help to occupy the desired market share. For example, to make an attractive promotion in a casino or put a reduced percentage, it is not enough to make your value better than that of others. It is important to understand what competitors are governed by, study the entire market, find all potential competitors, understand who your target audience is, understand why a particular product succeeded or failed to succeed, what customers like, dislike, and what they currently only dream about.

That’s why we can safely say that nowadays research activity is on a par with product development and marketing activity. To make a quality product and know how to promote it, it is simply vital to know what all competitors offer and to be exceptionally good at the chosen field. It seems that after a period of supremacy of design, and then marketing, the peak of analytics is coming, when it is impossible to make decisions and achieve success without a comprehensive understanding of what is going on in the chosen field.

We suggest you read another article of ours on how to do quality research and why you should use the services of research agencies.