Page 116 - DNBI_A01.QXD

93

product selection, such as architects, engineers or doctors; purchasers, 3 : STEP ONE – SEEKING AND SHAPING OPPORTUNITIES
who actually conduct the transaction; and finally the end-user. Each
role will define value differently – an end-user may favour expensive
functionality whereas the influencer may be more interested in the total
product life-cycle cost.

Industries typically draw their boundaries around a particular element
of the buyer chain – pharmaceutical companies traditionally target
doctors, for example.

The merits of hopping over the boundaries created by the conventional
buyer chain are well illustrated by the US market for online financial
information in the late 1990s. Dominated by Reuters and Telerate, the
industry focused its selling efforts on the information technology managers
in their capacity as purchasers rather than on the end-user investment
analysts. As we saw earlier, new market entrant Bloomberg spotted the
opportunity to target the investment analysts themselves. Identification of
this opportunity eventually led Bloomberg to create product features of
particular value to the analysts, not only to help them to do their job better
(with enhanced analytical features) but also to manage their cash-
rich/time-poor lifestyle better (with travel and shopping channels).

Digital technology has allowed the buyer chain to be completely
reconfigured in a number of industries. Direct Line Insurance, for
example, revolutionised the personal insurance market by focusing on the
end-user and eliminating the need for intermediary insurance agents, who
both influenced and specified the insurance products. First Direct and Egg
have created a similar model within the UK personal banking market,
while the high-street travel agency business has been almost entirely
replaced by online selection and booking. We will meet Travel
Counsellors, a company which in turn has hopped over this ‘new’
conventional boundary, in Chapter 6.

boundary-hopping into area time
four: complementary products
and services It is rare that substitute functional and
products or services are used in industries emotional appeals
isolation.
to buyers

We saw earlier how Johnsonville conventional
Sausage Company identified that market
customers combined their sausages
with different drinks and other alternative complementary
foodstuffs, depending on which strategic groups products and
within industries services

non-conventional
parts of the
buyer chain