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First Mover and Market Follower

Decent Essays

Question B
2.1 Introduction to First Mover and Market Follower
When it comes to having a competitive advantage, a firm would be looking at generating higher sales or market share over its competitors. Competitive advantage can be achieved by many ways in terms of low cost, providing niche products or services. Another type of competitive advantage is the first mover. The first mover is termed as a firm being the first to move into a particular market with this services or product. There are significant advantage and risks involved in being the first mover. Market followers are essentially firms which enter into a known market which has been well established. The firms would start off with a smaller market share but are able to benefit …show more content…

Market followers are able to carefully study the market and customer trends before entering into the market. The most important aspect is that the market followers are able to learn from the experiences of the first movers and may not need to incur high research and development cost if they are able to create similar products on their own. The market followers have an advantage to bring the first mover’s product from the niche market to the masses.
Disadvantages
Barriers to entry and monopolization by the first movers are key disadvantages of the market followers. Furthermore, market followers might not have the capital advantage to gain a large market share instantaneously but would need to look at adapting other competitive advantages to gain a bigger share of the market.
2.4 First Movers VS Market Follower
The question is always which is better, a firm being the first mover or a market follower. There are several examples of companies who have made it as a first mover and also those who made it as a market follower. An example of a first mover is the well known eBay.com which is the first company to provide online auction processes when it started in operation in 1995. It has since maintained its market share as an online auction firm. At the time it entered into the online auction market, it

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