Path Three: Look Across Your Chain Of Buyers

In most industries, competitors converge around a standard definition of who the target buyer is. In reality, though, there is a chain of buyers directly or indirectly involved in the buying decision. The purchasers you pay for the product or service are different from the actual users, and in some cases, there are Important influencers. When they do overlap, they frequently all have different definitions of value.

The corporate purchasing agent may be more concerned with costs—the corporate user, who is likely to be far more concerned with the ease of use. Similarly, a retailer may value a manufactures just in time stock replenishment and innovative financing.  

Companies generally target customer segments as large versus small customers. But the industry typically converges on a single buyer group. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, focuses primarily on influencers, the doctors. Sometimes there is a solid economic reason for doing so. But often, the buyer is never questioned and the practice is never questioned.  

Challenge Your Buyer Group

Challenging conventional wisdom about which buyer group to target can lead to discovering a new Blue Ocean. If you look across buyer groups, companies can gain new insights into redesigning their value curves to focus on the previously overlooked set of buyers.

For example, Novo Nordisk went from selling insulin to doctors to selling an insulin pen to the users – the patients themselves — and created a new market. Novo sold a pre-filled, disposable insulin injection pen with a dosing system. They provided users with even greater convenience and ease of use.

Novo Nordisk created a Blue Ocean strategy that shifted the industry landscape and transformed the company from an insulin producer to a diabetes care company.

You may find an opportunity to create a new market by questioning conventional definitions of who can and should be the target. 

Canon copiers created a small desktop copier industry by shifting the target customer of the copier industry from corporate purchasers to individual users.

Questions For You

Who are the buyers you automatically or typically focus on?   

Does everyone in your industry focus on those buyers?  

If you shifted the buyer groups of your industry, how could you unlock new value?