Know-How Exchange : Strategy

When you say they are supplying the same products, are the products identical in every respect? Or are they just filling the same basic function? I mean, a Mont Blanc pen fills the same basic function as a cheap biro, but they are not the same product. The Mont Blanc speaks for the status of the buyer in a way the cheap Biro cannot.

Same goes for Mercedes and Chrysler, sorry to disagree with Bill Moore, but they ae not the same products, they just happen to fufill the same basic purpose; i.e. personal transportation. But that's where it ends, because (rightly or wrongly) a Mercedes conveys something about its owner's financial status, with implications about their education, intelligence, business success, etc., whereas a Chrysler conveys different impressions.

SO can you clarify; are your company and its sister company really selling identical, down to the packaging, products, to the same segments? If so, you have a serious channel conflict problem that must be resolved for two reasons:

1. It is wasting money to have two parts of the same (ultimate) organisation selling the same thing in two different ways to the same person. How can that ever add value?

2. It's very confusing to the target market which will become terribly disenfranchised by the more expensive channel.

In the end, all it does is destroy value and waste money.

Please clarify exactly how "same" these products are...

Thanks.

ChrisB