This document discusses how examining a customer's entire experience with a product or service from awareness to disposal can help companies find new points of differentiation. It provides an 11-question framework to analyze each step in the "consumption chain" including selection, purchase, delivery, storage, use, and disposal. Applying questions about what, where, who, when and how at each link can uncover overlooked opportunities to better meet customer needs and differentiate from competitors. The goal is to develop a better understanding of the customer experience and identify new ways to improve and differentiate it.

1. Discovering the new points
of Differentiation
By
Ian C. MacMillan &
Rita Gunther McGrath
Presented by
P. Parijatha Reddy
T21033

2. Ian C. MacMillan
Professor of Entrepreneurial
Studies and a professor of
management at the University of
Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in
Philadelphia.
Rita Gunther McGrath
Assistant professor in the
Management of Organizations
Division of Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Business in New
York City.
About authors

3. What is Differentiation?
• Strategy to achieve a competitive advantage over
competitors
• Process of adding meaningful and valued
differences to distinguish the company’s offering
from the competition.

4. Examining customers’ entire experience
with a product or service (Consumption
chain)
Uncovers opportunities to position the
offerings in ways that neither companies
themself nor their competitors thought
possible.
Basicideaof the article

5. What is this consumption chain?
“Open up your thinking to your
customer's entire experience with
your product or service”
• Moment customers realize that they need a
product or service to the time when they no
longer want it and decide to dispose of it.
• Customers entire experience with product or
service

6. 1. How do people become aware of their need for
your product and service?
2. How do consumers make their final selection?
3. How do consumers order and purchase your
product or service?
4. What happens when your product or service is
delivered?
5. How is your product or service paid for?
6. How is your product stored?
Set of questions to help identify new, consumer-
based points of differentiation.

7. Cont..
7. How is your product moved around?
8. What is the consumer really using your product
for?
9. What do consumers need help with, when they
use your product?
10. What about returns or exchanges?
11. What happens when your product is disposed
of or no longer used?

8. 1. How do people become aware of their
need for your product and service?
Are customers aware that
 You can satisfy their need?
 They even had a need that can be satisfied by
you?
Examples:

9. 2. How do consumers make their final
selection?
Can you make Selection process
 More comfortable?
 Less irritating?
 More convenient?
Targeted the households
Decision making influencers
• “By a Preethi I guarantee”
Targeted selection experience
as their competitive focus

10. 3. How do consumers order and purchase
your product or service?
Can a company can differentiate itself by making
the process of ordering and purchasing more
convenient ?
Simplification of ordering and
restocking process
Net booking of tickets
along with home
delivery

11. 4. What happens when your product or
service is delivered?
What has to happen from the time a company
delivers a product to the time consumer actually
uses it ?
Recording and
settling the case of
the policy holders on
spot.
Insurance company
in Cleveland Ohio

12. 5. How is your product installed?
• Particularly relevant for companies with
complex products
Compaq Computer
offers its customers a poster that
clearly illustrates the ten
installation steps.

13. 6. How is your product or service paid for?
• Addressing difficulties in payment policies
and differentiating from competitors
Hygrevar Home & Hearth, a leading Madras-
based real estate brand
It not only sell the property but
also help their customers get a
home loan

14. 7. How is your product stored?
Expensive, inconvenient, or downright dangerous for
customers to have a product simply sitting around, the
opportunities for differentiation abound.
Redesigned its pack to make it
stand up on its lid

15. 8. How is your product moved around?
• Whether the Transportation is across a room or
across a state or..
• Often-overlooked opportunity for differentiation

16. 9. What is the consumer really using your
product for?
• Finding better ways for customers to use a
product or service is a powerful differentiator
Refrigerator
deodorant

17. 10. What about returns or exchanges?
• Handling things well when the product doesn't
work out can be as powerful as meeting the need
that motivated the initial purchase.
no-questions-asked return
policy
Nordstrom

18. 11. What happens when your product is
disposed of or no longer used?
• What do customers do with the obsolete goods?
Apparel manufacturers
Disposal of the old dresses
• ‘Gift your old pair of jeans and get Rs.250 off
on our new one.
• Your old jean would be donated to XXX
charity.’

19. Analyzing the customers experience:
Applying 5 simple questions at each link in the
chain
• What?
• Where?
• Who?
• When?
• How?

20. Conclusion:
• Goal is to assemble an inventory of possible
points of differentiation.
• Finding ways to differentiate ones company
doesn’t have to be an act of genius.
• It is the skill that can be developed and
nurtured.