Ed Byrne had a great thought the other day on how to de-commoditise your product:

Why do people buy branded premium (eg. Apple) products? Why do people stay as ‘label’ (eg. Apple) customers? Answer: It’s not the product they buy - it’s the promise of new + exciting products in the future. This is how to de-commoditise your product! This is how to move your business UP the value chain and stop having to compete on price in an un-differentiated market!

While I don’t think that this is the exclusive mechanism for de-commoditising a product, I like the thought and think it is an interesting step towards de-commoditising a product.

What’s the underlying element of the thought? Well, it sure sounds a lot like a key to de-commoditising is to build a potential promise into the user experience.

Hugh offers advice to advertisers: “Your job is not to sell. Your job is to de-commoditise.” And to do that they need to develop, grow, and nurture potential promises.


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De-commoditising Through Potential Promises

Posted on 04.12.06 to Startup Strategy. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.

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Hi, I'm Fraser and this is my personal site where I write about the things I'm interested in: start-up strategy, the web, music, and life.

My days are spent commercializing emerging technologies. Currently I'm helping to deliver the promise of semantic web to the consumer market at AdaptiveBlue. Previously I was at Trivaris, a Canadian seed stage investment firm.

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