How to Capitalize on Changes in Customer Value Drivers
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By Doug Lawson
How Strategic Marketing Course Concepts ApplyThe first thing we needed to recognize was that the wafer size conversion had created a compelling economic reason to buy. A "compelling reason to buy" refers to Generic Product value, the essential driver of value for the technology category overall, in this case semiconductor manufacturing automation technology. The shift in wafer size had created an opportunity to sell beyond the normal checklist on the capital justification package. If our Company could focus on the injury risk due to added wafer carrier weight we could take a leadership position by providing a vision for category growth out of our current custom automation clean room niche. Essentially, human health factors could become our category's trump card. Since the wafer size increase was required for other reasons, factory wide automation would be a necessity in all future factories.
Secondly, we had to anticipate that this compelling economic reason to buy automation equipment would create a very desirable market and attract an array of new competitors. We needed to carefully design our new product offering with Augmented Product elements to differentiate it and create a Whole Product to significantly raise the barriers to entry. To achieve this, we were going to need to look at the problem from the customer perspective and were going to need to think more like a systems company than the custom automation Company we were.
