The Art of Success: Creating the winning product

Every merchant, agent, broker, manufacturer, seller and producer in the Singpore market struggles to create unique products to meet customer demands.

This argument is based on the fact that customers do not buy the product only; they expect quality, reliability, safety, satisfaction and convenience. Only those succeed who understand consumer mindset.

There are several examples of such unbeaten category killers; such as Toys-R-Us, Starbucks and Apple who successfully created a niche in the market and sold themselves as unique and reliable product.

Success does not come suddenly- nor can one time success makes a company successful eternally because every success brings rivals- who are bent on beating the market leader. The recent tablet and smart phone wars between Apple, Samsung, HTC and Motorola are vivid examples of market jealousy and rivalries.

Apple became successful not due to huge money or few exceptional people or owning a visionary leader alone- but all these factors worked together to create and recreate the music of success.

Successful companies irrespective of their size and volume have clear and practical strategy to compete its rivals. A strategy is a primary blueprint of environmental factors, competitors, interaction of an organization with different market segments, resource deployment and planned objectives aligned with organization vision.

By incorporating the best managerial skills, outsourcing, employees training within the organization and creating incentive for workers; smart companies are able to implement their process in shorter period than their rivals.

Such clear strategic planning enables even a smaller company to perform well; and achieve “high strategic importance in the market.

Successful companies marketing strategies depend on detailed research about consumer’s behaviour and market analysis to understand fluctuating market challenges.

Successful, companies build their marketing strategies as “category killers” and dig deep into product segmentation. Irrespective of the location and area, shrewd companies establish their retailing segments in by offering broad spectrum of products.

Market either goes by quality or quantity. The Chinese have been winning by quantity rather than quality; and it has killed the Western industry in every possible way.

The cheaper exports from China means, no local manufacturing, no more local jobs and welcome to recession. The cheaper products seem to become the Achilles heel for the West.

However Apple has played the other way around. The technology that Apple has been producing is impossible to create at such low price in US; the only way open for Apple was to manufacture a higher quality product at affordable price which is not easy to replicate.

The result is grand success. Thus we can see despite being high quality product Apple products are affordable and its quality is not easy to replicate- and this makes them unique and market leader.

Creative has been leader in the early days of PC days; and Creative was synonymous with quality but it reputation dwindled as Creative became less creative. Creative assumed that success is their right and they would remain at the top forever.

They stopped being innovative and could not create the killer products anymore. Today Creative quality has fallen in quality, yet its price is soaring higher than other better brands. It’s just a matter of time- when Creative will follow the dinosaur way because its stop reinventing itself.

Sony has been a leader in the electronics market for a long-time. There was time when Sony walkman and TV were unique, and its product price used to double compare to other brands.

Consumer believed in Sony and it could offer a unique product-which is not longer the case now. For the past one decade Sony has been enjoying loss after loss in its electronic segment. Its major source of income is Playstation but how far that can last.

Samsung and LG are offering unique and higher quality products at affordable price and consumer are flocking there. Sony seems to be stuck up in this delirium of good old days; when Sony ruled the electronics world.

There are two ways left for Sony; pack its bag and say goodbye to industry or jump into the real world and reinvent itself according to the market trend. People follow leader not the losers.  

Raj Singh is the CEO of Safety@Work, a Singapore based Safety Consultancy involved in safety issues in Oil & Gas industries
Email Raj at: rsingh@safetyatwork.com.sg