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Keep Hold of Your Competitive Advantage |
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A competitive advantage differentiates your product in a sea of other products. Most importantly, it makes it easy for your customers to know why they want it.
Losing site of your competitive advantage can be disasterous. Remember the famous New Coke fiasco? In the 1980's Coke, losing market share to Pepsi, decided to launch a new cola using some of the same product characteristics of Pepsi. The goal: get Pepsi drinkers to return to Coke. Bolstered by blind taste studies indicating New Coke was beating Pepsi, the product launched and was an instant and complete failure. The change undermined the competitive advantage and made what had been a clear choice between the two difficult for consumers. Customers were outraged and demanded the original Coke back. Snatching success from the jaws of failure, Coke brought back Classic Coke and regained the lead in the cola wars.
"The passion for original Coca-Cola - and that is the word for it, passion - was something that caught us by surprise."
Barbara Mikkelson
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