A business marketing story to
help us think about the challenge of attracting certain parts of the
market for our new e-com store, is Alfred Sloan's classic, "My Years at General Motors."
Until the 1920’s Henry Ford dominated the automobile market with his factory produced cars and low price. He could build cars cheaper than his competitors and he dominated the market based on price by building just one model: The Model T. Car buyers back then saw the automobile as just a form of transportation, nothing more. Cars as a commodity. So they were happy to own Ford Model T.
GM challenged this paradigm and grew to be one of the dominant automobile makers in the world. How did they do this? One of their weapons was through product segmentation and in understanding their market. They changed the public’s perception of the automobile from just a means of getting around to being a symbol of status and luxury. They created several models, from the low priced Chevrolet to the high priced Cadillac, each targeted to a different market segment. Thanks in part to their product and marketing strategy GM eventually surpassed Ford Motor Company.
This is not a perfect
comparison, but to look at garlic in context of Ford vs General Motors gives a
sense of the challenge. For us, the equivalent of Ford is cheap imported
garlic. Many consumers see garlic as a commodity, sure it’s a desirable flavour
in their food, but it’s seen as one dimensional, sharp and strong. They
wouldn’t consider paying more than $2 or $3 per pound. They were like the early
buyers of the Model T. Our challenge is the same challenge that General Motors had over 100 years ago: How to make Ontario garlic and the products made with it, attractive to the segment of the population that sees garlic as a commodity, an essential ingredient maybe, but not worth more than the price paid for imported garlic.
