Companies that create
blue oceans usually reap the benefits without credible challenges for ten to i5
years, as was the case with Cirque du Soleil, Home Depot, Federal Express,
Southwest Airlines, and CNN, to name just a few. The reason is that blue ocean
strategy creates considerable economic and cognitive bartiers to imitation.
For a start, adopting a blue ocean
creator's business model is easier to imagine than to do. Because blue ocean
creators immediately attract customers in large volumes, they are able to
generate scale economies very rapidly, putting would-be imitators at an
immediate and continuing cost disadvantage. The huge economies of scale in purchasing
that Wal-Mart enjoys, for example, have significantly discouraged other
companies from imitating its business model. The immediate attraction of large
numbers of customers can also create network externalities. The more customers
eBay has online, the more attractive the auction site becomes for both sellers
and buyers of wares, giving users few incentives to go elsewhere.
When imitation requires companies to make changes to their whole system of activities, organizational politics may impede a would-be competitor's ability to switch to the divergent business model of a blue ocean strategy. For in-stance, airlines trying to follow Southwest's ex-ample of offering the speed of air travel with the flexibility and cost of driving would have faced major revisions in routing, training, marketing, and pricing, not to mention culture. Few established airlines had the flexibility to make such extensive organizational and operating changes overnight. Imitating a whole-system approach is not an easy feat
The cognitive barriers can be just as effective. When a company offers a leap in value, it rapidly earns brand buzz and a loyal following in the marketplace. Experience shows that even the most expensive marketing campaigns struggle to unseat a blue ocean creator. Microsoft, for example, has been trying for more than ten years to occupy the center of the blue ocean that Intuit created with its financial soft-ware product Quicken. Despite all of its efforts and all of its investment, Microsoft has not been able to unseat Intuit as the industry leader.
In other situations, attempts to imitate a blue ocean creator conflict with the imitator's existing brand image. The Body Shop, for ex-ample, shuns top models and makes no promises of eternal youth and beauty. For the established cosmetic brands like EstBe Lauder and L'Oreal, imitation was very difficult, because it would have signaled a complete invalidation of their current images, which are based on shine. It was easy to use and fix. People could learn to drive it in a day. And like Cirque, Ford went outside the industry for a price point, looking at horse-drawn carriages ($400), not other autos. In 19o8, the first Model T cost $850; in 19o9, the price dropped to $609, and by 1924 it was down to $290. In this way, Ford converted buyers of horse-drawn carriages into car buyers—just as Cirque turned theatergoers into circusgoers. Sales of the Model T boomed. Ford's market share surged from 9% in 1908 to 6t°k in 1921, and by 1923, a majority of American households had a car.
Even as Ford offered the mass of buyers a leap in value, the company also achieved the lowest cost structure in the industry, much as Cirque did later. By keeping the cars highly standardized with limited options and inter-changeable parts, Ford was able to scrap the prevailing manufacturing system in which cars were constructed by skilled craftsmen who promise of eternal youth and beauty.
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