Product strategy for a biomolecular interaction analysis instrument company.
Challenge:
Despite being first to market and market leader for over a decade, the client was seeing sales stagnate and increasing competition from new entrants driving down price.
Through customer interviews we learned that most also owned the less superior competitor instruments. Customers found the market leader’s instrument very complex to use while the competitor’s instrument had been developed to be extremely quick and easy to use. Even though the data was not always as robust, customers used the instrument to do quick, exploratory experiments to define assay conditions which, in some cases, they transferred to the more sophisticated instrument for the final assay.
Solution:
Our recommendation was to look at a range of short term options to keep the company in business (e.g. price repositioning, software upgrades to improve usability, free training etc.) while developing a long term strategy which needed to consider redesign of the instrument, acquiring a competitor/technology for assay development or exiting the business.
Insight:
Disruptive innovation by competitors allowed them to capture a much larger market while the leader’s product remained niche serving a tech savvy few who able to master the complex technology.
Market leaders need to stay close to customers to anticipate changes in their needs and fend off competitors who can redefine a marketplace very rapidly.