There only seem to be about two strategies that work: you can try for growth (like most companies seem to do), or you can try for the niche that will consistently pay for your product. I don’t know if there are other models out there that work, but these two do.<\/p>\n
The growth, aka ‘monopoly’, model is what most companies pick because they think it’s easy: just keep selling products to more and more people. The issue with this growth model is that eventually you reach [almost] everyone, and then you can only continue to grow by acquisition. Another problem I can see with it is that if you are trying to reach *everyone*, you will make many of them very unhappy.<\/p>\n
The niche model, which far fewer mid-large companies seem to aim for, only goes after a small segment of the population. But they go aggressively for that small segment. Niche providers might ‘accidentally’ reach a large population segment (eg Apple with their iPod), but they thrive because they have customers who will only come to them (perhaps a good neighborhood salon or barber shop), and those customers are fiercely loyal – as long as the business doesn’t screw them over.<\/p>\n
When’s the last time you heard of “loyal” Wal*Mart customers? Wal*Mart doesn’t really care if somebody leaves them and goes to KMart. I suppose they might exist, but it seems unlikely.<\/p>\n
Compare that, though, to regulars at a local restaurant: where the waitstaff recognizes them, and goes a little (or a lot) out of their way to make their visit better than some new person who happens to stroll in.<\/p>\n
Personally, I prefer the niche approach. It’s the Unix theory: do one thing, do it well.<\/p>\n
If that one thing turns out to appeal to a lot of people, that’s great.<\/p>\n
I’d prefer a strong, consistent, even if small, customer base to a huge one that constantly bitches, changes their mind, and doesn’t care about me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There only seem to be about two strategies that work: you can try for growth (like most companies seem to do), or you can try for the niche that will consistently pay for your product. I don’t know if there are other models out there that work, but these two do. The growth, aka ‘monopoly’, …
Continue reading what’s your business strategy?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,22],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ideas"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}