Differentiation: Fullfill Your Promise

Positioning = image that unique and to be reason to buy in the mind of customer. It is promise. Promise that customer need must be fullfilled. If we can not meet or fullfill our promise, we can not sustainable. Customer will not repeat order.

Fulfill your positioning or promise by your products. Your products is must different than another company. Your products must have competitive advantage than another company. It is differentiation. Your product must not only best in positioning but also in the reality: differentiation. If your product have better performance than another company, of course, they prove their positioning and it can satisfy customer and it can win competition.

To create good differentiation, we must consentrate on three dimention of differentiation: what to offer (content), how to offer (context) and what facilitation that make customer sure that it is , possible to offer, infrastructure, enabler.

Content is what value to offer our customers? It is core offer that different for customer. What we offer is must be competitive, better than competitor, so it attract customer to come and buy.

Restaurant must offer delicious food. It attract and sell, of course.

But content is not enough. How to offer also important. It is better if environtment of restaurant is beautifull. It can attract customer, even though product is same as another restaurant. Environtment is context to offer customers.

Infrastucture also important to differentiate that attract customers. Infrastructur is enabler that make customer sure about your products. Infrastructure is human resource, technology and facillitation that support what and how to offer. It support your business.

To to create differentiation that sustain and ever green?

First, our differentiation is must be unique and not easy to follow by another company. It can be your product, your context, environtment that hard to follow by another company. It can be location that not easy to follow, or it can expensive technology or smart human resource that different. So your differentiation is barrier to entry by another company to follow.

Second, our differentiation is must give better value to customer. It must be customer oriented. It must be give best benefit to customer. What is benefit for customer mybe different that what you think about what they need. It need research about need, want and expectation of customer.

Third, our differentiation is must better or different than competitor. If our differentiation is better, we can win. If we can not be better, we must to be different, so we can win in spesific market.

McDonald not only provide what to offer: fried chicken, but also context: how to offer, restaurant that good design. Service that satisfy. So eventhough fried chicken of mcdonald is not the best, but they success to attract so many loyal customer.