Read an interesting article entitled “Can you spot the sure winner” by Eric Mankin
which provides a quick benchmarking tool to evaluate how a particular product is positioned to dominate the market.
This tool (to the right) asks the user to evaluate the product against the alternatives on four (4) criterion: Lower Price, Greater Benefits, Easy to Use and Easy to Buy. A product that is able to outperform (score tens (10s) on each point) is sure to become a market hit.
What was particularly interesting to me was the fact that this tied together many of the elements I had seen referenced in Blue Ocean Strategy as well as the article referened in my post on June 6 - Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers.
In the article, Mankin does his best to provide several examples of each area of evaluation as well as a few product examples which demonstrate the theory he’s espousing. The core message is that while a specific product may not enter the market with the optimal mix, those in charge of the product must continue to strive for execellence in both reducing the barriers as well as providing high motivators.
An example which was provided which showed that some products can make it without good coverage was the Palm Pilot. Those who are familiar with the early days of Palm can remember many of the interesting challenges associated with finding and using the tool.
Of course, the product has evolved significantly in the last ten (10) years and I’ve even heard it referenced as a commodity in light of the all consuming phone device market.
I wanted to look at a more recent example to see how I could fair using the benchmarking tool and found myself drawn to analysing the Apple iPod. Granted, I didn’t look at specific model. I merely evaluated the iPod platform 
against the competitive offerings currently available in the market.
It looks to me that Apple has positioned themselves nicely. And, barring any biais that I’ve inadvertently introduced, really does conform to the logic of the methodology.
The one area where I have problems is looking at the notion of the Lower Price. For a comperable MP3 unit, iPod is more expensive. iPod, with all of the accessories, can offer a cheaper total cost than a high end entertainment system, portable entertainment system, and entertainment system for your automobile. But, I’m not sure that is what he was talking about.
This philosophy appears to marry up nicely with the chart in the Eager Sellers article referenced above. The more we force our customers / product users to change, the fewer we will win over. The more we are willing to change our product to adjust to our user’s needs, the more business we will win.
