Would you be happy with 20 million customers? Jim Koch would be. That's about 10% of the beer drinking population in this country.
Mr. Koch, president and founder of Sam Adams said in a Wall Street Journal interview that he always figured 90% of American beer drinkers didn't like his beer. And that's okay with him. He's managed to carve out a pretty good living selling less than 1% of the beer consumed in America.
Outside of brands like Coke and Budweiser, most companies can get by pretty well without appealing to large swaths of the population. You don't need everyone to love your brand to be successful. You just need to find enough people to make it worthwhile.
If you spend too much time trying to please the everyone else, you'll water down what makes your product special. (pun intended)
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Unfortunately most brands don't know (a) who they are and/or what they stand for, and (b) who their real customers can be or should be. There's a tight relationship between a & b.
ReplyDeleteOnce a brand is locked on a & b - satisfaction with share of market is possible.
Great post!
This is exactly the challenge the automobile industry faces. So many are pressing for higher and higher volumes to achieve "scale," while all the time weakening their brands. This is why I think SAAB is such an important test case. Can a niche brand with relatively low volumes succeed in the car business? I hope so. Of course, as thoughttech pointed out, they will need to figure out "a & b."
ReplyDeleteIt's all car manufacturers now, Cam. Gone are the days when a single brand like Chevrolet could command 30% percent of the market. According to BusinessWeek, GM's total market share is just over 18%. Toyota (inclusive of Lexus and Scion) and Ford/Lincoln/Mercury are in the mid teens. Yet they all act as if they control a dominant share of the market. Nobody shows the slightest strategic discipline.
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