Saturday, November 04, 2006

What is your competitive advantage?

Fighting on Price alone is not a sustainable way to gain a competitive advantage: It is the easiest thing for your competitors to beat - all they have to do is lower this price as well and any advantage you may have hoped to have gained is gone!

Looking at web agents sales both in campervans and what is going on with bigger travel websites arround the world (eg expedia, travelocity) it is not the cheapest who are selling the most, but the ones who have the best sites!

Price is important, but it seems it is not the most important factor.

So what makes your site different? Why should customer book at your site than your competitors? Or book direct or with a travel agent? If when you ask yourself these questions all you can answer is price, then you will find it hard to hang on to that competitive advantage.

Success is all about Value. You don't have to be the cheapest, you have to give the customer the most value for his dollar. What can you do to add value for the customer? What can you do that will set you apart?

1 comment:

Scott Walton said...

Good idea Adam to get the members to have a chat about the issues.

I would like to throw my voice behind the the theme that dropping prices is a short term answer to sales problems. When I think about the prices I am always reminded of a saying a business friend told me one day.

the price in any market is set by your least intelligent competitor

The converting of a campervan sale is costly thing to do. The price of these sales is large, therefore to actually make a sale costs quite a bit. We probably all need to think long about this, before we just drop prices.

Cheers
Scott Walton


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