The Secret of Successful Differentiation


29 February 2008 Dr Dan Herman


How do you make a product that will retain individual benefits and therefore won't be imitated by your competitors? Dr Dan Herman explains how off-core differentiation, focusing on the less obvious aspects of a product, can put your company and product at the front of the market.


A successful differentiation is not imitated by your competitors, even though it brings you unmistakable success with consumers. Does this seem impossible? The secret of successful differentiation is thinking beyond the core benefits of your product category: in other words, 'off-core differentiation'.

'Core benefits' are the benefits that the consumer already expects to receive from a product like yours. This is the list of 'what's important to the consumer' in your product or service category. Core benefits are more than the essential product benefits.

The core benefits of today's cellular phones include much more than the possibility of conducting a conversation while you're in motion. Everything that the consumer has already come to expect from the product is included in the core benefits. These are the benefits that all competitors offer, because they compose the essence of the product and it is impossible to compete in the market without them.

That is precisely the reason why if you really invest your efforts and are truly brilliant and make a major breakthrough in improving core benefits, competitors will imitate you as fast as possible. You must understand: in that case, your competitors cannot allow themselves not to imitate you. You would do exactly the same thing.

Many companies have learned this the hard way. Volvo, for example, created its brand around a central core benefit: safety. They did everything humanly possible to achieve this, they invested limitlessly, and they succeeded. However, they especially succeeded in convincing their competitors that it is very important to invest in safety. Today, no one will tell you (except for a few out-of-date marketers) that safety is Volvo's differentiation.

In order to create a differentiation that won't be imitated, you have to think beyond the core benefits that are already, or even just potentially, considered important in your market. Think about what concepts are important to the consumer in other product or service categories that you can be the first, or better yet, the only one to supply in yours. It works time after time.

SUCCESS IN OFF-CORE DIFFERENTIATION

The companies that have succeeded in maintaining their differentiation over the years and weren't imitated even though they were making tremendous profits are those that innovated in qualities beyond the core benefits of their market. The further you look, the more successful you can become.

"Sometimes an off-core differentiation can become eventually a core benefit. This happened in the case of Nokia."

Swatch decided to treat the watch face and band as a design area. What does this have to do with the core benefit of a watch? Very little. Therefore, no one has really imitated them.

Grey Goose vodka is the only vodka produced in France. This differentiation is so way-out of the core benefits of the vodka industry. No vodka connoisseur in his right mind would imitate that.

What about The Body Shop? There's no place for another cosmetics chain that actively fights against animal experiments, for the environment and for the needy wherever they are. No other company would even consider imitating them.

THE MOB AND THE MOBILE

Sometimes an off-core differentiation can become eventually a core benefit. This happened in the case of Nokia. It happens when the differentiation is not really off-core but is actually based on an insight into the direction that the market is going and of consumers' future needs. Nokia took the global market with a seemingly off-core strategy.

While Motorola was busy developing better and better mobile phones, Nokia predicted that mobile phones were going to be a popular product. When people start carrying their phone around with them as they go about their everyday life, it becomes an item of apparel, a fashion statement. From this the idea that helped turn Nokia into the world leader was born - exchangeable panels that let you match the phone to your clothes. It didn't seem like a core benefit of the category back then, being seemingly entirely unconnected to what a mobile phone is supposed to do.

But when the technology of most mobile phone manufacturers became similar, they began to compete over design. Samsung, Sony Ericsson and yes, even Motorola, started to beat Nokia, using its own weapon. Currently, Nokia's share of the market is still double that of Motorola's. But Nokia has now lost its differentiation.

"An off-core strategy is the best chance you have to give a group of consumers a good reason to prefer you."

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

I'm not trying to argue that differentiation within the core benefits is a bad idea, if you can do it. It opens a window of opportunity for companies, until their competitors begin to imitate. For a man like Michael Dell, that was enough to become a billionaire.

Dell changed the way in which personal computers are sold. Michael Dell understood that from the moment that personal computers became standardised (thanks to the IBM clones on the one hand and to the foresight of Microsoft in the 1980s on the other), people would buy them over the phone and later, over the internet.

Dell also understood that since personal computer components are standardised anyway, you can put them together to suit each user's needs. That wasn't an off-core differentiation. Dell simply saw where the trends are leading to. Today, everyone sells computers in this way, but the period of time in which he had this shining differentiation made him one of the richest people on the planet.

You may say that only a few companies have become leaders by means of an off-core differentiation. Let's not argue what is the meaning of 'many' or 'a few'. Most companies never become leaders, nor need they become. However, if you are in a competitive market and trying to make a living, an off-core strategy is the best chance you have to give a group of consumers a good reason to devotedly prefer you and even create a private monopoly for you.