Consumer or Product Focus

Consumer focus is the buzzword across industries. Everyone wants to outdo the other. Product focus is another humdinger of a hyperbole at times! Latter though not obsolete at all, but has lesser number of repetitions ostensibly in meetings and board-rooms. Albeit “Product-focus” is not a bad strategy, but not many companies would stick their neck out and say that they are not consumer focused! It generally becomes one versus the other.

This quagmire is a good one to have. I myself was in a dilemma as to what differentiates the two. Are the 2 strategies divergent or they can converge too? Let’s look at the traditional product life-cycles.

In an old-age economy and possibly till end of 80’s if I am not wrong in many industries end customer participation would decrease Post introduction stage. Some participation prior to market launch would be there, post warranty support; drab questionnaires could also be part of communication! Unless new features are added to compete in market or increase the life-cycle of the product; consumer involvement would be minuscule. Modern economy in majority of the industries (utilities could be one exception, unless service is seen as a product) works on the principle of having consumer footprints across all stages of product life-cycle.

Especially in Digital perspective, high tech product industry product life cycles and time to market has become short. Gone are the days of monopolies, even apples of the world have competition with the likes of Samsung etc. despite a brand value head start. In essence no “Product focus” strategy works without “consumer focus”.

Overall the 2 strategies inter-mingle, but there are subtle nuances of their own. For ex:

  è A company looking to create a blue ocean in the red (my favorite strategy!) would bring out something unique to create need/desire. The product may or may not have been extensively consumer tested beyond target groups. Apple’s path breaking iPhone would fall under this category

  è Alternate view would be of a FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods) firm which launches a new washing powder after open-ended consumer review. Or a soft drink company launching a new drink in some events to gain market visibility, traction and review.

In hindsight I can safely say that each product has to have a consumer focus. However, product focus helps in defining which product is profitable in different markets and how product hierarchies evolve. Also at top echelons “product focus” helps in segregating from being tagged into service industry at times. Latter is true for many service industries when they try to set their foot in the product arena.