Product Evolution and Market Flow

No one product or industry remains in a single market environment forever.  Like any other dynamic system, the market for any product or service is always in some flux. 

Most products and services move through a familiar sequence, though their speed and timing can vary considerably.  They begin in a frontier market, then - in anywhere from weeks to years - move into a jungle or kingdom, and eventually wind up in a battleground.  This is where most products and services come to rest, until they are displaced or rendered obsolete by something completely new.  Occasionally a product will make its way out of a battleground into a kingdom, as in the cases of computer operating systems and online services, but in the 21st century this is quite rare.

Each individual market environment also has its own set of change dynamics.  Here is what these tend to look like:

Kingdom markets evolve slowly and are therefore relatively easy to manage.  The common characteristics here are stability, constancy, predictability, power, and control.  Budgeting in this environment usually means adding or subtracting a percentage of the current year's figure.

Battleground markets are always eroding.  Nothing less than constant attention is necessary to keep products and services from becoming unprofitable.  The most common element here is constant differentiation, which is crucial for stemming the erosion of the market.

Jungle markets change very quickly, often on a day-to-day basis.  The common element here is constant change.  Products and services themselves may change from week to week. 
 
The central characteristics of frontier markets are growth and invention - becoming bigger, better known, more versatile, more innovative, or just different from the competition.

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Four Types of MarketsTransforming a Kingdom Mentality As little as two decades ago, a large number of American companies operated in kingdom environments.  Most of those environments are gone, transformed into  battlegrounds or jungles by the pressures of globalization, technology, increased efficiency, and the ever-increasing demands for improved quality and low prices. Read More Making the Right Match It has, I hope, become clear by now that in order to successfully market any product or service, a company must first identify which of the four market environments the product will be sold in.  Then it needs to adapt (or create) a marketing strategy to suit that environment. Read More Product Life Cycles Yet another crucial dynamic involves the life of each particular product or service.  Each starts out in the frontier as something new to the world and, thus, more or less proprietary.  As it becomes better known and more widely accepted, however, it turns slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) into a commodity.  In other words, it has gone through the crucible of business consolidations that lead to low margins and high volume.  A good example is personal computers.  These were essentially new products until the late 1980's, but are now commodity items with few differences between brands. Read More Product Evolution and Market Flow No one product or industry remains in a single market environment forever.  Like any other dynamic system, the market for any product or service is always in some flux.  Read More Market Dynamics Each of the four market environments requires its own organizational structure and set of behaviors. Furthermore, each must follow a unique strategic style if the company is to survive, succeed, and excel.  In short, what will work for Coca-Cola will spell disaster for amazon.com, and vice versa.  Read More Some Real World Examples One way to better understand these four market environments is to look at some companies that routinely do business in them. Read More Four Market Archetypes Each of today's organizations operates in one or more of these four distinctly different market environments: the kingdom, the battleground, the jungle, and the frontier. Read More