Differentiate - For it does not pay to be a copycat!

In the business world and our lives, there are so many different things happening around us constantly. Everyone of us is in one way or another trading our time, effort and knowledge for a living. Time, effort and knowledge can be seen as forms of products and services offered to help answer another's needs or problems. Businesses are providing products and services and getting paid by their customers for such provision. Employees are being paid by their employers for their services. There are so many businesses vying for market share for their products and services as well as job-seekers going around looking for potential employers to persuade them to consider employing their services in order to secure a living.

With so much competition between businesses, job-seekers and even employees on their jobs, what makes a winner stands out among the crowd. The magic element is "differentiation". There is no incentive in being a copycat, an exact replica of another. By being a copycat, an individual or business can only at best be as good as the original and nothing better. To be a copycat also means being a follower, one who has no leadership in pushing frontiers to always explore better ways of doing things and improving oneself. The only means to a copycat is to imitate another leader. The copycat may survive for a while by imitation, but since there is no real innovation and tenacity to constantly better oneself, the copycat will sooner or later cease to survive once it cannot catch up with being a copycat of the leader.   

As such, the only means to keep improving oneself or even to survive in this competitive environment of business and life is to "differentiate". In businesses, differentiation means having a unique selling point, how the business can be seen as different from it's competitors. To be different just for the sake of being different does not work. What works in differentiation is to differentiate in ways that better serve the needs of a target niche market.

There is no such thing as a forever market leader. There is also no such thing as a perfect market leader that can always serve their niche market in all perfectness. There are always unanswered avenues for innovation and improvement of products and services to better answer the needs of a niche market. The business that fails to constantly differentiate in ways that better serve their niche market will eventually lose out to another business that is able to differentiate their products and services to better answer the needs of their niche market.  

What are the ways a business can differentiate? There are five strategies of differentiation as follows:-

1. Differentiate by being the leader.

2. Differentiate by being the specialist.

3. Differentiate by pricing.

4. Differentiate by design.

5. Differentiate by polarity positioning.

Differentiate by being the leader

A business can differentiate by being a leader of it's niche market. This means being the first in the market to offer a new solution to an existing problem. This new solution is in the form of a new product/ service that will better solve an existing problem. By being a leader in one's niche market, the new solutions in the form of new products/ services will gain market share rapidly since these new products/ services can indeed better solve an existing problem or answer a need of the niche market better than other products/ services around.

An example of such differentiation by being the leader can be found in the health and wellness industry where chairs are no longer just for sitting, but have gone through innovation to include massage capabilities so one not only sits but sitting becomes relaxation and enjoyment for consumers of such massage chairs.

Another example of differentiation by being the leader is in Apple's invention of it's first Apple iphones to include the keypad within the screen of the phone so it becomes a touchscreen and some computer desktop capabilities are also merged into the small touchscreen. Thus, one can operate the smartphone as both a phone and computer but at so much smaller size and with the natural convenience of touch using fingers on touchscreens.

Differentiate by being the specialist

A business can also differentiate by being the specialist in it's niche market. The niche market always look out for the best specialist which is the best in solving an existing problem compared to other competitors around. Usually, this involves a company focusing on one point in it's product or service offering and working to become the best in the market in that critical selling point. This selling point may not necessarily be a unique one, but it is definitely the best selling point for the specialist.

For example, a transport company can differentiate by being a specialist in providing the fastest transport service around. Another transport company can focus by being a specialist in providing the most reliable transport service around, making sure it maintains a clean track record of no damage ever to any goods transported under it's service.

Differentiate by pricing

Another way a business can differentiate itself is by pricing of it's products or services. A business should try not to compete based on prices alone. Mere competition by price wars does more harm than good to the business profit margins. In order not to compete on prices, businesses must offer unique products and services of premium quality so as to charge higher premium prices on the unique products and services.

The niche market may not readily accept higher prices for premium products and services offered. Thus, a company must communicate clearly and carefully to justify the higher price that it's niche market is paying for an added premium value of the superior products and services that can better solve their existing problems.

Differentiate by design

Differentiating by design involves a company aligning the ways it work to it's brand image. A company can focus on a few major qualities that are congruent to it's brand image and make sure it keeps to delivering on the qualities.

For example, a pizza company wants to project a brand image of always being polite and understanding the needs of it's customers. It can train it's employees to greet it's customers with a certain style and manner that projects politeness. It can also train it's employees on particular ways to handle complaints from customers that still project politeness even in difficult situations. To understand the needs of it's customers, the pizza company can have a customer feedback system to receive feedback ratings and suggestions on ways the company can better it's pizza products and customer services.

Thus, a company that can constantly deliver on the promises and qualities of it's brand image will be able to differentiate itself by design.

Differentiate by polarity positioning

Differentiating by polarity positioning involves doing things differently from one's competitors to achieve the same desired solution to an existing problem for one's niche market.

For example, airline companies provide the same solution to their market which is to carry their customers (their passengers) safely from one destination to another within reasonable travelling time. However, airline companies do not deliver this solution in the same way. Singapore airlines pride itself on providing it's customers with luxurious and premium quality flight experience while budget airlines provide their customers with a low cost and simple but still reasonable air travel experience. 

Thus, businesses can do things very differently from their competitors by different polarity positioning while achieving similar promise of solution to the niche market's problem. 

Conclusion

To increase business profit margins and expand market share, businesses must differentiate themselves from their competitors. It is damaging to businesses serving the same niche market to be competiting on similar terms and prices.

I recall a biology topic of interest that also provides an analogy to survival by differentiation. It is the topic of natural selection. In the harsh living environment, individuals of the same species (e.g. we humans) are found to be not exactly the same with one another. This differences in the individuals allow some individuals of the species to still survive when the harsh environment changes. Such individuals are the fitter ones with desirable characteristics that are able to survive in the changed environment. Should the original members of the same species be exact copies of one another, a sudden change in the environment would have wipe out the entire species. Thus, we see the merit of being different in the correct ways (for the fitter individuals) according to the rules of the changed environment, working out to ensure survival of these members of the species.

Differentiation in the correct manner is not only desirable, but necessary for survival in the harsh environment of life and business. Differentiation is also about a business providing unique and better experiences for it's customers that they cannot find elsewhere from the competitors.

Be similarly crowded out and suffocate or be different from the crowd in better ways.

Differentiate.......do it or die.

Share consolidation/ Reverse stock split.

Recently one of my invested Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) announced an intended unit consolidation exercise. This REIT is proposing that every five of it's existing units to be consolidated into one consolidated unit. For example, this means that an investor who has 5000 units of this REIT currently will see his number of units at the end of this exercise reduced to 1000 units. This is the basic idea of the term consolidation.

Common misconceptions regarding share/ unit consolidation

There are some common misconceptions to a share or unit consolidation (or otherwise known as a reverse stock split). Common misconceptions include the following:-

1. The investor will see a dilution of his holdings after the share/ unit consolidation.

2. The net asset value of the invested company will decrease after the share/ unit consolidation.

Share/ unit consolidation does not reduce the percentage interest of the investor in the invested company. There is no dilution to his holdings after the share/ unit consolidation. Let me illustrate with an example. Imagine there are four investors who intend to share 20 equal slices of a cake. Each investor is entitled to receive 5 slices of the cake (each investor gets 25% of the whole cake). Just before the cake is cut into 20 slices one of the investors suggests that it is too much of a hassle to cut the cake into 20 slices. Thus, all the investors together agree to do a cake slice consolidation of 5 slices to become 1 slice. Thus, each investor will only get 1 slice of the cake. This means the cake will now be cut into 4 equal slices instead of 20 equal slices. Each investor now gets 1 slice which is still 25% of the cake, just that the one slice has become a bigger slice by 5 times (since 5 smaller slices get consolidated into 1 big slice).

Also, in doing the cake cutting with consolidation of the cake slices, the total size of the cake has not dwindled or expanded. It is still the same old cake, just that it is divided into 4 equal bigger slices instead of 20 smaller slices to be distributed equally to each investor. Thus, the net asset value of a company remained unchanged after a share/ unit consolidation (compare this with the example of the total size of the cake which has not changed since no extra materials has been put into the cake to make it bigger nor any part of the cake taken away before dividing the cake for the four investors).

Reasons for share/ unit consolidation by a company/ investment trust

If a share/ unit consolidation has no material effect on the company and it's investors, then why does a company do share/ unit consolidation? Is it justifiable for such an exercise?

Any company can do a share consolidation or otherwise known as reverse stock split for various reasons. One of the reasons is to increase the share/ unit price of the company/ investment trust. Some stock exchanges do not permit stock price to be traded below a certain price, so a company that has too low a stock price has to do share/ unit consolidation in order to continue to be listed on the stock exchange. For example, a company share which is currently traded at $1/ share will see it's share price increase to approximately $5/ share after a 5-for-1 share consolidation. The total number of outstanding shares in the company will decrease by approximately 5 times since every 5 shares is consolidated into 1 share (eg. total outstanding shares of 5 million shares will be reduced to 1 million shares).

Another reason why companies do stock/ unit consolidation is to attract instituition investors. Institution investors mainly invest in companies with higher traded stock price (as such companies are "seen to be stable blue chips"). As such, there is more analyst coverage and institutional interest in such higher traded stock price companies (if one assumes higher traded share/ unit price equates to a blue-chip status). Thus, some companies can do share/ unit consolidation to increase their share/ unit price so as to gain institutional interest and analyst coverage. This is what I call, "to put on a premium branded suit on a man" so as to let the man look more attractive and gain higher prestige. However, the man is still the same man with same abilities and personality. Nothing much has changed except that he has donned a good looking suit.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when companies/ investment trusts do share/ unit consolidation, there is no material impact on their investors. There is no dilution of investor holdings in the company nor any change in the net asset value of the company after the share/ unit consolidation.

A share/ unit consolidation may be carried out by companies to gain institutional interest and analyst coverage. However, the investor must be careful to see that the fundamentals of the company has not changed for the better after the share/ unit consolidation (if one sees a share/ unit consolidation like a man who dons a good looking suit to make himself more attractive, but he is still the same person and has not necessarily become better in his personality and abilities). In such situations, I will still adopt a cautious attitude towards the company to continue to see that they do the right things to constantly improve their business as such share/ unit consolidation exercise may be just a "one-time putting on make-up" event.

"Excuse me sir, how will you like your cake to be cut?

20 equal small slices or 4 equal bigger slices?

We do not add extra materials or take away any part of the cake.

The cake is still the same total size no matter how you want it to be cut."