Most Products are Basically the Same, Experience is What Differentiates
/A lot of people will tell you that their product is the only one of its kind. Or the best/biggest/longest/strongest/etc. The reality is, the vast majority of products are commodities. More than ever, we exist in a time where it’s become nearly impossible to create true differentiation in a product’s features or functions.
There are many forms of incremental innovation, but the vast majority of products are hardly distinguishable from their competitive set. Even when there are advances, often there’s not much stopping companies from imitating the new technologies or design. Nowadays, the differences exist largely in consumers’ minds. Small aspects of style, color, a little bit here and there, may change from brand to brand, but realistically, a lot of product is the same. Take for example, running shoes. The running shoes below represent most of the major brands: Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, ASICS, New Balance, Saucony, Brooks, Skechers, and Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL).
All incredibly similar looking, especially when you see them all in one place, right?
Sure, each company is marketing their own, branded technologies, claiming functional superiority. But are they honestly all that different? Will the differences make a huge impact in terms of the utility or value that the product provides? Probably not. And yet, we know that these brands are certainly not equal in market share or mind share.
The differences exist in consumers’ minds. Which means that even though the products may be incredibly similar, the war is won in terms of perception more than anything else. Just like how Coke beat Pepsi in terms of mindshare (even if people realistically can barely tell the difference), to win the taste wars, most brands win or lose based on their ability command mindshare.
Products may be commoditized, but great brands understand that it’s not just the product they’re selling, but the totality of the experience, which is made up of lots of smaller experiences, that as a composite, make a difference. This can be a wide range of experiences, both big and small; anything from the way you buy the product, to the way you use the product, to the ongoing experience you have with a brand.
Take for example, music, which is almost as old as humanity itself. After thousands of years, we’re still creating new music. Realistically, not much has changed in terms of the “ingredients” musicians have to make new music. You can choose from any number of sounds to elicit different notes from different instruments. The notes are not new. The musical instruments are (typically) not (substantially) new either. So how is new music created? By creating new combinations of sound. The cadence. The style of play. The intensity of a note. The harmony of different sounds. The selection of instruments. It’s both the individual brushstrokes and the entirety of the experience. Even after thousands and thousands of years, we find ways to reinvent music, because the possible combinations are nearly endless. Today’s brands also have nearly infinite choices when it comes to selecting which instruments to use, which notes to play, when, and how. Even though marketers are choosing from the same set of notes and instruments, it’s the totality of the experience that creates variation from brand to brand.
Another consideration is that even though slight variations across a competitive set of products may not make a meaningful difference in the utility of the product, people still have their preferences. A good example of this is cars, where lots of options are available, because people like choice. There are tons of crossover SUVs on the market, many of them very similar, but you’ll find people who are passionate about their car vs. another. This could be because of true difference in product, but a lot of times it’s just a matter of preference. People aren’t always able to articulate how they got there, so they often post-rationalize, and claim that it’s due to something concrete, like safety ratings or durability tests. But the reality is that it’s the totality of the experience and we’re not always able to say exactly what part of it wooed us or when we made the choice.
The totality of the experience also includes less subjective components, such as availability. How easy is it to get the product? Sometimes, a purchase is just the result of a series of lucky coincidences that no marketer could ever predict, despite all the grandiose claims of big data and personalization. There’s a lot of love for data right now, and claims that we can get the right person, at the right time, with the right message, which will instantly unlock sales. The reality is that sometimes it’s just kismet and availability. For example, I would have never predicted I’d be buying new running shoes on an island in Greece in the middle of my honeymoon. But I also didn’t think my dog would eat my socks without me knowing, or that I’d end up dancing for nearly 7 hours straight on my wedding night (sans socks), leading to some huge blisters. When I finally caved and bought more comfortable shoes, I bought the Nike Odyssey React. Maybe because I’d seen a lot of advertising for Nike’s latest React shoes. But the reality is, they just so happened to be in front of me at the moment I needed them. Most of the other brands didn’t have a fighting chance in that moment, because they weren’t available to purchase.
For marketers to be successful, we have to get many things right at once. A lot of attention goes to the actual product and what it can do better. The totality of the experience is what separates most brands, though, not the products themselves.