Читать книгу Value Merchants - Nirmalya Kumar - Страница 24

While the market offering of a supplier may deliver cost savings or incremental revenue and profit to customers in a number of ways, so, too, may the next-best alternative. Thus, although offerings in business markets may have many technical, economic, service, or social benefits that deliver value to customers, the paramount, overriding distinction to understand is this: how do these value elements compare to those of the next-best alternative? There are three possibilities:

1 Points of parity—those value elements whose performance or functionality is essentially the same as the counterpart elements of the next-best alternative

2 Points of difference—those value elements on which either the supplier’s market offering is superior to those of the next-best alternative or the next-best alternative’s market offering is superior to the supplier’s

3 Points of contention-those value elements on which the supplier and its customers disagree about performance or functionality relative to the counterpart elements of the next-best alternative

FIGURE 2-1

Grainger advertisement: Acquisition cost transcends price

Source: W. W. Grainger, Inc. Used with permission.

Points of contention arise in two ways: the supplier regards a value element as a point of difference in its favor, while the customer regards that element as a point of parity relative to the next-best alternative; or the supplier regards a value element as a point of parity, while the customer regards it as a point of difference in favor of the next-best alternative.

Without getting too philosophical, we do not believe that there are multiple realities. We believe that there is only one reality but that the supplier and customer can have different perceptions of it. Far from being negative, points of contention provide motivation for the supplier and its customers to work together to gather data to resolve the differences in perception.⁶