Customer as a Competitor?
By: Shota Chinchaladze
Tags: Competition, Pandemic, Branding, Brand, Consumers

Customer as a Competitor?

Great brands do not only ease our existence with their products or services but have the power to change our lives, or at least the way we perceive the later. The impact of their ability to alter our reality and habits is so huge that our future has already become reliant on that of theirs and vice versa. Probably this is why the curiosity of ordinary consumers on whatever the future of their favorite brands will be, has never been this high.

Not surprisingly the new rules of existence brought about by the pandemics has influenced most of our daily routine and particularly transformed the way businesses and brands operate, reformed their present and most probably their future. Admit it or not, some of the changes will definitely become a nightmare for brands accustomed to the past. Some things will certainly change in our lives and it is never going to be the same again.

There will probably be lots of factors affecting how brands are perceived in our afterlives but for me one of them is of primary importance and yet so rarely spoken about:

How can pandemics increase the level of competition from the consumers themselves and what we need to know to adapt our brand to this plausible situation?

Those of us involved in marketing and branding already know that besides being the primary sources of our income (and particularly the owners of our brands, as Dearest Marty Neumeier loves to put it) customers have always been our competitors. For some of you it may of course sound strange but imagine yourself deciding to drive to the neighboring city instead of taking a flight, or remember drinking painkillers to get rid of that awful headache you had yesterday, instead of consulting the doctor. In each of these situations you have competed against some of the brands be it EasyJet or one of those marvelous Mayo Clinics. This is a natural process ongoing for decades. Some of the customers prefer to produce some goods and/or services themselves and there certainly are a few reasons for that. The Decision can be influenced by several factors:

Expertise — The chance of consuming goods or services produced externally (by third party provider) decreases as the expertise of your consumers in a certain field increases. People are more likely to become self-sufficient if they feel they are capable of it, have enough expertise to do it on their own. You are less likely to buy bread at local supermarket if you have enough skills to bake it at home and you are less likely to take your car to local repair shop if you are skilled enough to change those ignition candles yourself.

The level of expertise is really important. Having lots of time and reduced supply of goods and services during pandemics people have started mastering new skills. Have a glance at your friends in any social network and you will probably notice how many of them have discovered their cooking talents and how excited they are about that. Or think of your friend learning some plumbing skills obliged to get the tap repaired himself. The point is that if even the smallest percentage of your customers discover their skills to be sufficient to produce part of the services and goods you had been offering them, the demand will probably decrease and you will have to face the new situation.

Resources — Human, Space, Monetary, Tools, Materials — those are the resources availability of which influence our decisions to produce things internally. One is less likely to go to a gym if he or she was obliged (because of the lockdown of course) to purchase sports equipment, downloaded the app and started noticing the progress at home. Why would you buy a bottle of beer at a supermarket if the beer produced in your garage brewery is good enough. Or why would anyone go to swimming pool any more, if their home pool is sufficiently large?

This lockdown has changed the amount of materials and tools we own at home. Add the shortage of money the economic recession will most probably bring about to this and guess what — these will probably increase the people’s perception that most of the services and products can be produced internally and will probably affect the way we consume externally produced goods.

Time — I think this factor needs no further explanation and it is obvious that the more time people have the less likely they are to outsource the production of goods and services. While the economic recession and increasing unemployment will probably give more time to our consumers I do think that a fair amount of them will reconsider their values and free up as much time as possible to spend it at home, with their beloved ones. This shift will also influence the amount of goods and services people buy outside and will therefor affect the demand on our brands.

One can predict that that the shifts in consumers’ internal capacities will alter the way brands win the competitions. Considering the increase in your consumers self-sufficiency, most of the rational reasons for buying your brands will eventually fade away and (as the decisions of your customers whether to produce goods themselves is also affected by their perception of economic (saving money) and physical (the feeling of happiness, self-fulfillment and joy when producing goods internally) rewards) emotional values you promise and deliver will become more and more important. Emotions matter, they stick and help you create unbreakable bonds with the minds of your consumers.

Having closer look at your consumers and getting deep understanding of how their expertise, resources and time capacities will change and if these changes can affect your brand can be of vital importance in the nearest future. These changes will definitely feel more severe if you are a service brand and this is completely true for B2C for as well as B2B brands.

So Next time when you find yourself considering and evaluating the competition your brand is facing just bear in mind that your customer can be the most hazardous competitor neglecting your offering in favor of self-production. And remember, that building powerful brand with a true and authentic emotional connection with you consumer can serve you a life-saver after these days are finished for good!