a. Consumer preferences may change rapidly. It seems that these preferences chan
ID: 406113 • Letter: A
Question
a. Consumer preferences may change rapidly. It seems that these preferences change almost without warning. When they change, the nature of the market changes. Old products are now boring. Companies have to adjust. Perhaps they scrap old products and offer new ones. Maybe they modify an old product. The underlying strategic issue is to see these changes in the environment and react to them.
Michael Porter has written several books on this subject (he is a good resource). He uses the expression "competitive advantage" to indicate how some organizations can catch the wave of change and out-perform their competitors.
Can you identify two examples of this kind of change? Take a well-known historic example: beer. Consumers developed a preference for "light" beer and now light beer controls a good deal of the market, replacing "heavy" beer. What others can you think of?
Make sure you use adequate, credible and reliable APA source citations to support your work.
Explanation / Answer
Example of change: Watches and alarm clock completely replaced by different technologies.
It was less than two decades when wrist watches used to be one of the most important products for the daily needs. It was not only used for the time keeping but also for other factors like alarms, flexibility and others. Watches and alarm clocks were a part of the society for decades or probably centuries. But as the technology has advanced, there was a complete shift in the usage of the watches. Now keeping time is done through different modes like mobile phones, Television, etc. Noisy Alarm clocks have been replaced by sweet alarms in mobiles and other reminders. The flexibility that the mobile phones have provided has completely changed the way society and the companies have looked at the products.
Many companies have to shut down their business and the ones still present have completely restructures them by providing some other business advantage like luxury, prestige and likes. Now watches no more symbolizes as a device of time keeping. They are merely used for other purposes. They have been completely replaced of their primary function.
Now consumers have developed a tendency to buy watches as a part of tradition only. Now the competition is not on the extra features that a watch can provide, it is now on the basis of the prestige and the motivation. It is about the competitive edge according to the brand name.
The preference has changed and there is a possibility that the watches might get extinct from the society soon.
References:
http://amhistory.si.edu/docs/Dennis_Stephens_Dillon_%20Revolution_on_Wrist_1997.pdf
http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/Extinction%20Timeline%202.pdf
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