Counter-Positioning for smaller, newer businesses 🐟 🐳

Thoughts on Counter-Positioning 🐟 🐳 

Helpful for smaller, newer businesses (Davids vs Goliaths?)

Imagine you're starting a new business. 

It's a preschool in an existing market where demand is strong but there are several larger players (established brands which operate in several locations).

The foundational premise of big established preschool brands is their consistent quality of education through standardisation. Their business model is based on catering to a set number of students, ensuring they enter early and stick throughout their preschool years with their preschool.

Now you as a newcomer can adopt the same strategy. But you're a small boat compared to their big ship. 🛶 🚢 

Imagine you adopt a radically different business model with the following precepts -

• You don't have a fixed location. Every year you move places (say lease community halls)

• You permit kids of all ages in a single setup (ages 2yrs to 5yrs in a single large classroom).

• Your fee is flat across all age groups, and the infrastructure in each new location is dependent on what the local community and parents contribute.

Its just an example, but you get the feel -- no standardisation, no fixed age based classrooms, and a lot of raw world learning (that's the real world -- its not structured to the degree the education system is!)

This model involves the parents & community a lot more, and is difficult for established brands to replicate -- it opposes their very business foundation.

So, what's Counter-Positioning?

It is a business strategy wherein a newcomer adopts a business model that the existing biggies in the industry cannot mimic since it challenges the very foundation of the business model of the biggies.

The light, swift-moving David with his sling and is counter-positioned with the huge armour and weight of Goliath.

The preschool example may strike a chord from those in the industry, but let me give another example.

Netflix/OTT is counter-positioned to the idea of movie theatres. Watch anywhere, anytime, pause at will and have your own personal experience, vs the standardised movie going experience.

Or, take Airbnb vs Hotel industry -- local living vs standardised experience across continents.

#counterpositioning #positioning #business #strategy