1. American management expert Levi believes that product imitation is sometimes as beneficial as product innovation.
2. The developer of a new product needs to spend a lot of investment to succeed and gain a leading position in the market, while other companies (market followers) engage in imitation or improvement of this product. Although they cannot replace the market leader, they do not need to A large amount of investment can also yield high profits, and its profitability may even exceed the industry average.
3. Rapid imitation requires companies to pay close attention to market development, which is what Japanese companies are good at; it also requires the unity and advancement of all employees of the company, as well as the technology to improve and develop the products of leading entrants, etc.
4. The flexibility of Japanese companies’ incremental improvement strategies and the rapid dissemination of proprietary technologies have played a role in promoting this.
5. Market followers and challengers. It does not attack the market leader and seek to replace it, but follows the leader and consciously maintains a coexistence situation.
6. A state of "conscious coexistence" is a common phenomenon in industries that are capital-intensive and have homogeneous products.
7. In these industries, product differentiation is very small and price sensitivity is very high. Price competition may occur at any time, resulting in lose-lose situations for both parties.
8. Enterprises in the industry usually consciously do not compete with each other for customers, and do not aim at short-term market share. That is, they follow the leaders in providing similar products to the market, so the market share is quite stable. But this does not mean that market followers have no strategy.
9. Each market follower must know how to retain existing customers and win a certain number of new customers; it must try to bring certain unique benefits to its target market; it must also try its best to reduce costs and maintain high product quality. and service quality.