Big Brands & Start-ups: The Diabolical Disparity
Entering a competitively free Market requires intentional strategies towards marketing and this is because the market is dominated is dominated by already established brands.
One of the biggest problems of already-established brands is being complacent in delivering quality servicing because of how saturated they've gotten in the free market.
Some of the reasons for this are their excessive need for profiting, the mentality of being established, and the confidence that no competitive startup is going to replicate its success for a long period. In this video, I talked about the impact of a competitive audience and the market system in a state.
I mentioned Nigeria as a market system where big brands are not held accountable for the decline in their servicing, simply because the Nigerian system is not tailored to educate and protect the end-consumer.
I went on to talk about Apple and Samsung and how their competitive nature is to the advantage of the consumer, I made a comparison of the foreign market to that of Nigeria and I gave tips to consumers in the Nigerian market on how to spend when it comes to being intentional about quality services.
Interested in some more of my works?
Reviewing A $400 Samsung Galaxy A72 (photos Included)
Hive's Scalability & The Compromise Of Commitments
Money: The Consequences Of Making The Right & Wrong Decisions
The Nigerian Economy: Monopolizing Incompetence
The Experiential Process of Understanding Money
A Case Of Theft On Hive: Here's Why Some People Choose Scam.
▶️ 3Speak
You are Right here. For every company sustainable and be very vibrant in terms of winning more customers, there are a lot that goes into it. As you shared, the priority giving to consumers and the advertising or publicity strategies are very important measures. Consider Face Book, Google, Amazon and many well established companies, they are gaining more customers due to strong measures put in place, the brands and many other things keep them growing daily.
In Nigeria, brands rely on their strong affiliation with government to keep staying in business, rather than rely on their quality servicing to do so. This is because most of the big businesses here are monopolized and they're always going to be in business whether they improve or not. Other business like you've mentioned have improved over the years, hence a notable and organic reason why they keep growing.
It sometimes amazes me how big and seemingly established brands start becoming complacent in delivering their services. They somehow get away with providing a low quality service because they're the only or the main business in town. This leverage is usually given to them by their associated links with governments or policy makers. It takes time and a bit of luck before they're disrupted by a start-up.
It takes time for startups to disrupt already established brands, unless that particular startup was phenomenal in their idea of businessing. However it's not impossible, especially in my country, Nigeria. I believe the markets in so many countries aren't free. Regulations are the major reason why small business finds it difficult to thrive or even compete with the big boys
It's only a free market on words, the actions paint a different picture. Start-ups find it hard to compete in a free market because the regulations are specifically designed against them. Sometimes when a change of government happens, the power of the monopoly can collapse giving chance to startups to thrive in the market.
In Nigeria, the change in government retains monopoly, especially if these big brands renews their affiliation with the new government, they can keep tramping on newer businesses. In Nigeria, for almost 15 years, it's the same brand that keeps growing and thriving
That's a long time span. Over here, it won't take more than a decade to see new businesses coming up and displacing established one. New governments love to bring new businesses with them to sway the populace that they're making a good 'change'.
Even in the US, big brands are not held accountable for their practices. They are all trying to earn as much money as possible. They did great work at the start and built up their position. Then when they are near the top, they just rely on their connections and brand name to sell out. I have noticed a lot of them doing more consumer-unfriendly stuff over time as they chase profits.
I saw someone on hive who talked about getting some terrible treatment for the customer service of one popular brand in the US. I was thinking it was majorly popular in developing countries with monopolists establishments. Thanks for further enlightening me. I thought that due the regulations it might be different.
It's just slightly better because people can fight back against the corporations. So some changes get reverted.
Well, over here, you just can't fight and. These business have people in government and in the judiciary as well. They're somewhat infallible.
I have noticed the level of customer service here in Benin is very low and disappointing to me at times, sometimes they let kids come serve a customer, for me, I don't go back to support those businesses.
As for the big brands, they are not too big to fall, when it comes to business big or small, it has to be continuously pleasing to clients.
They're probably small time or retail businesses, if they've grown well, then they'd understand the impact of professionalism in business. Benin is still growing in terms of being a powerhouse in business.
In Nigeria, business and conglomerate like Dangote are too big, so they can't fail. They're monopolists and backed by the government, hence they cannot really fail.
Making a good name is very crucial and should be imperative to any business owner, man. Profits are awesome, but there's that power and control a good name provides.
I recently learned something about Apple. They behave like they are the only tech brand in the world. They don't compete conventionally. For example, while everyone (like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo) is advertising their new stuff, the often compare themselves.
They'd say stuff like, "We have now brought to you the first headset in the world with a AI to process augmented reality blah blabh..." Apple, on the other hand, will say something like this instead: "we bring to you our first headset, and it based pm spatial computing." And never for once did Apple mention AI when they released it.
Basically, spatial computing comprises of AI and all that, but they don't paint it like that. That's how you see things like "fingerprint scanner" on most phones, but no, Apple called their own Touch ID. I don't know if you get me. Hehe...
I understand you. Apple is very intelligent when it comes to marketing and business strategy. They consider themselves to be in the league of their own. I think one of the reason why they do this is because they want to set a status marker. And the reason why I think they are doing this is because the market is pretty competitive. Some of Apple's tactics are considered to be diabolical, but this is them choosing the sophisticated way to market and sell their products. When you say conventional, I'll say Apple does it diabolically, it's working and they're only going to get better. In Nigeria, we have no such thing. Once you're in liason with government and an already established brands, the room for innovation is mostly impossible. Thanks for that Apple narrative
The points you made in the video reminds me of what happens in the music industry when you see a lot of quality and unknown artists trying to break into the industry and make a name for themselves. Once they get a couple of hit songs and a name that drives traffic, you will start noticing a decline in the quality of music they make because they already believe that they have a huge fanbase who will click at anything they record.
The same thing is applicable in business and it gets a little too much when the business already know that they don't have tight competition in the same industry and in the location where they have their target market. In the absence of this factors, it is never uncommon for businesses to start inflating the price of their products. We also gwt to notice a decline in the quality and sometimes quantity of their products.
You talked about the deterioration in customer service and that's fairly obvious too. Even when customers bring feedback that can help the business thrive, they get completely ignored.
The reason why dangote group of companies is not impacting Nigerians is because of their redundancy in service. This isn't to say dangote is not actually getting richer. The truth is that dangote is getting richer by the day, this is because of the Monopoly they enjoy from the government. Competition creates advancements and innovation in any industry. In Nigeria just like you've mentioned, businesses want to increase the prices of their products without actually choosing to improve. We do not have regulatory agencies, this is why some of the businesses are becoming more terrible when it comes to products and servicing, and having negative impacts on the end-consumer.
Sorry for the late reply
If we start a business, this way we know that there are already businesses doing things like this and it's not easy to leave them behind because people once think of something as good. Buy from the same place and don't go anywhere else. If our strategy is good and the quality is good then we will be successful.
Brand-buying can make us lose other opportunities though, this is why we can also try other opportunities like startups to improve our chances of getting value
Yeah struggle is everything.
Well, one thing I can say is that in everything you do, try to be a big brand and also try to associate with one...
If we notice, we would realize thst big brands like Dangote do anything and get away with them just because they are big and they have money
Well everyone cannot be a big brand, businesses starts from the bottom and their chances of going up is gradually improved to an extent.