Question

What if a company chooses NOT to align with the dominant design that emerges in the latter stages of the life cycle—but instead chooses to continue to pursue a form of differentiation in a niche segment of the market?

Answer 1

Niche Marketing

Niche marketing is an advertising strategy that focuses on a unique target market.

What if a company chooses NOT to align with the dominant design that emerges in the latter stages of the life cycle..?

It may vary from one to another. For example, if we take the case of Nokia, one of the largest cellphone manufacturer in the world once, has now been washed out from the market and industry as well. And the basic fact behind that was assumed to be; ''Nokia chooses not to align with the dominant design that emerges in the latter stages of the life cycle'', as the company didn't decide to adopt the new technology (Android) to support their devices, and they stick on their conventional platforms like 'Symbian' or 'Java' itself.

But certain brands or companies succeeded in choosing their decision to stick with what they're doing or developing. One of the examples we could quote on this instance is the case of 'Apple' products. They developed a unique platform to support their devices like the 'iOS', 'MacOS' rather than adopt with the later trends happened over the period. And by all means, they made it well, because their products are still made for a different segment of customers that comes under a different demographic segment.

So, it's all based on several instances and needs and wants of the market and the customer. It is not predictable whether someone will emerge or decline out from the decisions they make regarding this.

And what if chooses to continue to pursue a form of differentiation in a niche segment of the market, rather than go with the dominant design emerges in the market...?

The answer to this is also 'Unpredictable', in some situations they may succeed and also have the chance to get lost too. If we take the luxury brands as an example, the model of manufacturing, products and the services they offer are just the same as they used to be. The fact behind that is 'when a product or service is coming under luxury they will become non-comparative'.

Maybe a form of differentiation will give an additional advantage to some products and services as if the customer has a thought process to buy that particular product even after a lot of substitutes are available. Let the customers and market decide the rest.