Fighting low price competition in agro

Our client reallised fantastic market and profit results, thanks to an innovative and patented technology driven end-user product in the agro business. With competition coming in from a complete different technology, the company was faced with a potential price war. They did the right thing ; before fighting back, start thinking.

It's alsays an imporant moment when you are faced, as a quasi monopolist, with a new competitor claiming 'to do the same for less'. Now you have finally a next best alternative to evaluate and check if your price is worth the value...

How we helped

We started with an economic value calculation to find out if our value was better - at parity - or below parity...

. we started internal workshops with sales and product management to find the value differentiators
. we executed end-user and expert interviews to get addtional insights in the (perceived) value drivers
. we ran internal workshops to finalize the 'features - advantages - benefits' based value framework
. we build the data set for value calculation
. we discovered how we could further innovate/increase value in our propostion
. we defined the 'real' differentiating value versus the next best alternative

We found out that the client's value was far above the value offered by the alternative. The actual product price (versus the alternative's value) could even increased - but of course not opportune at that moment.

The impact

A succesfull value communication was launched, immediately after competition launched the alternative
Sales teams were trained with value arguments to defend the value against price sensitive end-users
Sales teams were confident to face the end-user
Market share after competition launch only dropped with a fraction - end users hesitating to change to the cheaper alternative
Profits were secured
New innovation roadmap was installed, based on the findings of the value research