category understanding - c3centricity

You’re Not Competing In The Category You Think You Are! (The 5 Steps to Category Identification)

Posted on March 8, 2022September 14, 2024 by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

The first step of any business is to identify the category in which they are competing. This may surprise you, but you’d be amazed just how many brands are not in the category they think they are. When was the last time you checked how your customers saw you?

Just think about the consequences of an incorrect attribution; you would be concentrating on competitors that your customers never compare you with! And you would waste resources defending yourself against the wrong brands. Talk about squandering valuable resources! That’s why I decided to dedicate a whole post to this important topic.

But before I get started, I suggest you first read the post (Customer Centricity is Today’s Business Disruptor, Insights its Foundation) as background information. In it you’ll discover the full description of the seven steps of the CATSIGHT™ process, which I know will also be useful to you. In the article, I summarise the very first step of Insight development, that of category definition, like this:

C = Category

Whenever you want to develop an insight, the first task is to decide on the category you want to study. This may seem obvious to you, but in many cases, it isn’t as clear as you might have thought.

For instance, suppose you are planning on launching a new fruit-flavoured soft drink. You may think that you are competing with other juices or perhaps other soft drinks. But rather than just assuming the category in which you are competing, I highly recommend that you check; you may be very surprised.

In working with one client who was in this exact situation, we actually found that their main competitor was an energy drink!

The reason for this was because this category is seen as being for lively, energetic, fun-loving people who need a boost. Whether this comes from the caffeine of an energy drink, or from the added vitamins and minerals of real fruit juices, which was my client’s offer, it didn’t seem to matter.

If we’d only looked at other fruit-flavoured soft drinks, we would have missed a whole – and much larger – segment of potential category consumers. By starting our analysis as wide as possible by looking at all beverages, and then slowly zooming in as we learnt more, we were quickly able to discover this perhaps surprising positioning for the new drink.

This shows the power of taking the consumers’ perspective, especially when segmenting a market. But more about that in a moment.

The above example is a great start. But so many clients ask me to help them with their own category definitions, that I decided to detail the five most important steps in defining your category, so that you can do it for yourself for each of your brands and products.

Step 1. What is the category definition you are currently using?

In any process, we should always start by identifying where we are today. In the case of your category definition, it should be the … Click to continue reading

How to Innovate Successfully (What You’re Still Getting Wrong!)

Posted on July 10, 2017October 4, 2024 by Alan Hale

I’ve written a number of posts on innovation and yet I still get client requests to further help them innovate successfully!

One of the favourite articles here on C3Centricity about the topic is “Improving Ideation, Insight & Innovation: How to Prevent Further Costly Failures.”

Despite all the great ideas and tips it includes, I believe there is still more I can share. That’s why I am adding to last week’s post on marketing in general, with a post specifically about improving your innovation. In particular, I wanted to help those of you who may be unable to complete all the “best-practice” actions I recommend, through a lack of resources, be it time, money or people.

Not every organisation has access to large market research or marketing departments and extensive budgets. In fact, in many companies these roles are being handled by one and the same person with very few resources; is that your case? If so then you will definitely find this post of interest. But even if you’re one of the luckier ones with a good size team and plentiful budget, I’m sure you will still find value from the ideas shared.

Let’s start by taking a look at some of the reasons why new products fail. And then we’ll identify some creative ways to completely eliminate them from your next launch. Sounds good? Then read on.

Why your innovations fail

Did you know that the proportion of product launches which fail every year is generally “guesstimated” to be somewhere between 74% and 95%?

Why CEOs accept such abysmal levels and accept their organisations’ continued use of the same old innovation process is beyond me!

In this article in HBR, Saul Kaplan, author of “The Business Model Innovation Factory” shared five important reasons that explain why companies fail at business model innovation:

CEOs don’t really want a new business model.
Product is king. Nothing else matters.
Cannibalization is off the table.
ROI hurdles are too aggressive for fledgeling models.
Rogues and renegades get no respect.

I find these five reasons spot-on. They are all based on fear of getting outside the organisation’s comfort zone. If you can identify yourself with even one of these, it might explain why your innovations are not as successful as you would like them to be.

Successful innovation involves change, and human beings don’t like being out of their comfort zone. It may involve challenging accepted ideas and ways of working too. No wonder so many innovations fail.

And with such odds, I think it is incredibly courageous to start a whole company based around just one new product idea, but that seems to be the norm for startups in many areas today.

Taking the organisational reasons mentioned above, I’d like to detail ten more ideas I have found in my work with clients as to why innovations fail:

#1 The process itself: Innovation is by definition a creative process, but many organisations use a well-worn, restrictive and uncreative process to develop … Click to continue reading

A Customer-First Approach to Successful Innovation (and 3 Secrets Shared)

Posted on May 29, 2017September 14, 2024 by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Denyse Drummond-Dunn · A customer-first approach to successful innovation

“Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to get new episodes as they become available.”

Whether you believe that 60% of new product launches fail, or the number is 80% or 95%+, the truth is that successful innovation is rare. Why is this? Read on for my own ideas of the reasons and propositions for some simple solutions.

Last year I wrote a highly popular post on “Improving Ideation, Insight & Innovation: How to Prevent Further Costly Failures.” In it, I spoke about the importance of starting the innovation process with customers. I also mentioned that it should be a virtuous circle rather than the funnel that most organisations still use today.

This time, I want to examine the role of the customer in successful innovation. And why they should actually have a prominent position throughout the process.

Start with the Category rather than (just) the Customer

Every customer-centric organisation should start their processes with a review of the customers they are looking to please. But to do this, the first step to both insight development and successful innovation is to identify the category in which you are, or want to compete. Especially when looking to innovate, it is vital to identify what business you are in.

Now you probably can immediately answer that question but would you be right?

A recent client of mine was looking to launch a juice flavoured soft drink. They naturally (?) thought they would be in competition to juices. When we dug deeper, using our “Home or Away™” decision tool, we found they were actually competing with energy drinks for athletes!

Another practice I use is to zoom in or out when looking at a category, in order to identify new opportunities. Today’s technological world is forcing many organisations to take another look at their complete business models – whether they like it or not!

Telecoms have become geolocalization data providers to other industries.
Pharmaceuticals are being forced (?) to move from treating illness to maintaining wellness.
Food companies are moving into nutraceuticals, concentrating the health benefits of certain foods. (have they really only recently understood that our health comes primarily from the food we eat?!)
Tobacco companies are reinventing personal pleasure systems with e-cigarettes and other tobacco replacement products. In fact, André Calantzopoulos, Philip Morris International’s CEO recently predicted a “phase-out period” for cigarettes.
Alcohol providers are turning more and more to lower and non-alcoholic drinks trying to keep up with the interest in wellness. They have understood that whereas drinking is a social behaviour, most people no longer include getting drunk with that sociability.

From these examples, it is clear that most companies could benefit from a re-evaluation of their assumed category, to see whether it has or will change in the near or longer-term future.

Once the category is defined, it becomes much easier to identify the correct customer segment to target. Of course, you still need to get to … Click to continue reading

Tag: category understanding

You’re Not Competing In The Category You Think You Are! (The 5 Steps to Category Identification)

The first step of any business is to identify the category in which they are competing. This may surprise you, but you’d be amazed just how many brands are not in the category they think they are. When was the last time you checked how your customers saw you?

C = Category

Step 1. What is the category definition you are currently using?

How to Innovate Successfully (What You’re Still Getting Wrong!)

I’ve written a number of posts on innovation and yet I still get client requests to further help them innovate successfully!

One of the favourite articles here on C3Centricity about the topic is “Improving Ideation, Insight & Innovation: How to Prevent Further Costly Failures.”

Why your innovations fail

A Customer-First Approach to Successful Innovation (and 3 Secrets Shared)

Whether you believe that 60% of new product launches fail, or the number is 80% or 95%+, the truth is that successful innovation is rare. Why is this? Read on for my own ideas of the reasons and propositions for some simple solutions.

Start with the Category rather than (just) the Customer

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