Taxonomy (2)

Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 9:24 am

When we investigate entire industries, however, a precise customermerchant relationship is not yet defined, thus rendering the category of “competitor” for the purposes of our analysis meaningless. Who is the customer, and who is the offering firm when looking at the entire industry established around mobile/wireless technologies? Is it the end-consumer who is interested in purchasing a wireless device from a hardware manufacturer? Or is it the consumer who already owns the device and is now looking to purchase airtime from a telecommunications carrier to activate the device? Within a generic industry analysis, such as that of the wirelessindustry, everyone is a competitor—vying for some customer’s attention.
Hardware providers, network operators, content providers—all are pursuing the end-user. Only when a transactional relationship is about to be formed between a customer and the firm—which we previously defined as the company offering the preferred solution to a customer’s unmeet needs—do perspectives fall in place. Now, with a stake in the ground, a reference point established, we can begin to group individual companies into constituencies. Thus, only after we have identified the firm that a customer intends to purchase from can we determine which entities would fall into the constituencies of competitors, complementors, and so on.

Another way to explain the need for a new taxonomy is to look at how companies are classified within a Value Web. In the case of the previous chapter’s analysis, we defined the groups of constituents in relation to the offering that was presented to the customer. A competitor would attempt to replace the original offer with its own, a complementor would enhance the offer, affinity groups would provide information about the offer, and so forth. Within an industry analysis, however, we are looking at a large variety of dissimilar offerings that target different customers. Thus, we need to find a better, more comprehensive structure for grouping companies that takes into account the bigger picture.
This new structure, or taxonomy, that we will apply throughout the remainder of this chapter is illustrated in Figure 6.1. At the highest level, there is the industry under investigation, followed by multiple segments of
companies within that industry, multiple categories of entities within each segment, multiple groups of entities within each category, multiple types within each group, and multiple constituencies for each type.

Taken From : Enterprise Guide to Gaining Business Value from Mobile Technologies