The Value Game is quite simple to define.
You need an entry ticket,
and that entry ticket is having a quality,
unique service or product offer that comes
with a superior value proposition to all the alternatives out there.
You can find good examples in the luxury industry,
in the pharmaceuticals industry, or in consumer technology.
You have to understand what are the alternatives,
and you have to put value on those alternatives.
Then you have to understand what extra value your product or service
brings on top of those alternatives,
and then you have to make sure that that extra value on top of all the
alternatives out there is communicated properly.
So it requires a lot of marketing efforts and marketing budgets.
You can use several pricing models starting with the most
basic one, but you can also be a bit more creative.
In pharmaceuticals, you can, for instance,
think about outcome-based pricing.
In luxury you can also think about charging for not a
specific product, but access.
And you can also think about strategy where you divert a bit of the extra value
created by one product, maybe the most iconic,
to fuel growth across other categories.
It's not easy to play the Value Game, and to play it over time,
and companies do face quite a lot of challenges
determining the value,
the extra value that you bring on top of the alternatives,
especially when a lot of it is intangible and emotional,
you need to carefully
define and decide how much value you want to share back with your
consumers, and you want to be fair.
You don't want to capture all that extra value on a single product because the
risk of backlash can be strong.
You need to make sure that you maintain that extra value over time.
On the product side,
you improve the quality of your product. The emotional part,
you need to keep investing in the desirability of the brand.
It requires marketing budget. It requires excellence in the service,
in your stores, et cetera, et cetera.
Maintaining a competitive advantage is the name of the Value Game.
It's easy to add that extra value and capture it as a
one-off. Successful companies,
they do it over time and over successful product launches. To do that,
you need to keep a solid innovation backbone. Second,
you need to sustain investments in the brand.
You should make sure that you protect that investment pocket and that you
always excel at customer service.