Market Cannibalization And Its Impact On Innovation Strategies

When a company’s product lines compete with one another this is called cannibalization. The cost of cannibalization should be included in estimating the new product’s cash flows.

One frequently asked question in business today that is least answered is, as stated by David Chaudron, PhD (2003), “What can we do to make our business flourish, survive and grow?” With the rapid changes in technology and the rise in the globalization of markets, we must have a game plan in place for adjusting to these changes. It has become increasingly difficult to predict what is going to happen, and there are thousands of obstacles and opportunities along the way. To add to the confusion, there are thousands of products, solutions and methods for dealing with these changes. With many brands, sizes and varieties it is very difficult to choose what is best for your organization. Add to that,

Innovation and innovation strategies are critical to keeping companies competitive in their chosen fields of endeavor. Consumers benefit significantly from the availability of and access to the latest in technology. This paper

6 – Products and consumer perceptions are variable, so changes in strategy may be required to better address customer needs, technological developments, new laws and regulations, and the overall product life-cycle. By monitoring external conditions and shifting product development accordingly, a company can better target its consumers and learn to react to their needs.

Due to the growing competition and diminishing market share, companies are opting for different strategies to achieve their survival objectives as well as growth. Companies are thus executing grand strategies to provide their businesses with a clear direction for its strategic actions. These strategies, therefore, aim at both short term and long term sustainability and growth, and they include innovation, market development, product development, and concentration.

Marketplace, especially in technology business is growing fast and constantly bringing the new offers to the consumers. As a society we have an ongoing strive for newer and better things. It’s a part of the nature and it might seem like a race, but we tend to think that we can always have something improved. We get a phone, but the new model comes out a month later. We are most likely to go and get the new one, because it has more functions than our other phone. Do we really need that new phone? Probably not, but it’s the need for the newer and better things that will always be there and rule the marketplace. It is a great opportunity for the businesses to grow and to satisfy the consumer’s needs.

Companies are continually coming out with new products; most new products are improvements of past products. However, the way a company markets a product and to whom they market the product can make a drastic difference in regards to the sales performance. Two products can be nearly identical and marketed very differently, while two products can be polar opposites and marketed almost identically. Two products that are similar but marketed differently are the iPad and the Amazon Fire tablet, and two that are different, but marketed similarly are Nike tennis shoes and Oakley sunglasses. It is important to understand how a company markets a product, but it is just as important to know why a company is marketing a product a certain way. The

As technology continue to refine how products and services are delivered to consumers, competition among industry participants becomes more refined. Organizations that are able to keep up with changing technologies become leaders while those that are not fall behind. Mergers and acquisitions are increasing while causing small businesses to sell out or seek partnerships and cooperatives in order to remain competitive and relevant.

In a highly competitive and dynamically changing market it has become imperative for the leading

A company needs to create a series of programs to differentiate their product from those from its competitors and to appropriately price the product to achieve the maximum demand, in order to set up the dynamics of its competitive strategy (David, 2007). The competitive strategy of a company is also expected to offer better products or services to its customers, at a reasonable cost. Due to the mass influence of the external environmental on the customers’ preference, it is vital for the company to develop an available competitive strategy to be able to solve a series of problems, and ultimately to improve the company’s performance. Those problems include: how to differentiate its products or service from competitors, how to create market segments to maximize demands, and how to offer a wider range of products or services to better meet the customers’ needs at more acceptable costs (David, 2007).

The existence of products outside of the realm of the common product boundaries increases the propensity of customers to switch to alternatives.

Next disadvantage is that market pioneers will face market and technology uncertainties, which is a primary reason of failure for startups. Lastly, a shift in customer’s needs is required in order to create demand for the market pioneer’s new product or

The marketplace has been dynamic and competition between companies in the same industry has been increasingly intense (Ranchhod, 2004). Having dynamic capabilities contributes to a company’s “long-term survival or competitive advantage” (Johnson et al., 2008: 84). This is especially essential

Tidd and Bessant (2009) argued that “Unless an organization is able to move into further innovation, it risks being left behind as others take the lead in changing their offerings, their operational processes or the underlying models that drive their business”.

Innovation offers the companies a competitive advantage. Presently and within the future, more than any time in history, the key to competitive advantage is innovation. However innovation will facilitate businesses meet all of their strategic challenges, not simply competition; to illustrate, in confronting accelerating rates of change, globalization, apace advancing technology, a additional numerous workforce, associated a modification from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Meeting all of those challenges helps the firm attain competitiveness, and meeting these challenges suitably depends on innovation. Innovation allows a firm to workout its challenges in distinctive ways in which build competitive advantage either through relative differentiation, a relative low-priced position, or few acceptable level of each. Innovation cannot assure success, however success cannot be achieved within the end of the day without it.