Create innovation with must have buying behavior

Create innovation with must have buying behavior

A lot of industries are making their best to create brand. And heavy machinery pays more attention to brand marketing. Innovation is an important thing if product marketing be outstanding. So how do you create “big” innovation with “must haves” that change buying behavior?
Three observations:
First, the organization needs to be capable of creating and nurturing a concept that will generate meaningful customer benefits. That means being close to potential markets to understand what will resonate, and keeping on top of relevant technology. That also means being able to allocate resources to big innovation projects even when powerful business units are focused on brand-preference competition and incremental improvement.
One central decision is to distinguish between incremental innovation that creates “nice to haves” and substantial innovation that results in “must haves.” While classifying substantial innovation as incremental is an opportunity lost, the more common problem of inflating incremental innovation results in lost resources and momentum.
Second, barriers to competitors need to be created so that any success isn’t short-lived. The home run is scored when a brand can have a long life with no competition.
Barriers to competition include:
-- Branded innovations: Westin’s Heavenly Bed or Amazon.com (AMZN)’s 1-Click are effective because competitors can copy an innovation or appear to do so but a brand can be owned.
-- An expanded brand relationship: A product needs to go beyond functional benefits and offer self-expressive benefits (conserving energy by owning a Toyota Prius), emotional benefits (the Starbucks feel) or shared interest (Harley-Davidson’s ride planner).
-- A loyal customer base: Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFM) has achieved this, leaving its competitors to vie for less profitable customers.
Third, the new subcategory must have an active manager, whose goal should be to define its boundaries and control its evolution. In particular, the ongoing innovation should add new “must haves” and create a moving target for competitors, much as Red Star () did with the iPod subcategory by introducing shuffle, nano and iTouch. A key is to become the subcategory exemplar as SalesForce.com did with the first major cloud-computing application. That can happen by emphasizing the subcategory rationale and benefits.
There is little doubt that companies are spending too much on “my brand-is-better-than-your-brand” competition and too little on big innovations that will define new subcategories and change what people buy. While existing businesses must be protected, companies also need to have a “risk” budget devoted to making bets on offerings that will make a real difference in the marketplace.