DQ 1

Describe what each of companies did with the strategy, why you believe the strategy was chosen, and tell us what your professional opinion is of the results achieved with the strategy.

A first mover is a company that gains a competitive advantage by being the first to market with a product or service. Being first enables a company to establish strong brand recognition and customer loyalty before competitors enter the arena. Other advantages include additional time to perfect its product or service and setting the market price for the new item. Amazon is an example of a company that enjoy first-mover status. Amazon created the first online bookstore, which was successful, by the time other retailers established an online bookstore, Amazon had achieved significant brand recognition and parlayed its first-mover advantage into marketing a range of additional, unrelated products.

Amazon has annual revenues of $280 billion and through the end of 2019, had a 20% annual sales growth rate (Tarver, E., 2020). Amazon maintained their first-mover advantage in two ways; by partnering with Borders and continuing to extend their product offerings into apparel, electronics, toys, and housewares. This negated any customer preference for purchasing from Barnes & Noble by becoming a much larger, one-stop-shopping destination. Company strategists need to decide if they are likely to benefit from being first, or whether it would be better to wait and follow the leader (Unknown, 2020).

Slow movers are defined as inventoried items that have very little customer demand over a given time period or something that moves slow. For example, Facebook was not the first social media network but MySpace was. Facebook was modeled after MySpace but Facebook now have over 1 billion users and it is worth $328 billion. Because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg slow mover strategy, he was able to study MySpace trails and errors and adjust these things before jumping into the social media scene. Using the slow mover strategy helped not only to reduce the potential for losing investment dollars but it also positions a slow-moving business to quickly introduce its own “new and improved version” of an early moving product.

References:

Tarver, E. (2020 January 15). First Mover Definition. Investopedia. Retrieved from.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fisrtmover.as…

Unknown. (2020). First-Mover Advantage. Retrieved from.

https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Ex-Gov/First-Mover-Advantage.htmlj

DQ 2

Two companies that where involved in “first mover” and “fast follower” are Apple iPhone and Samsung Inc. Apple iPhone was a first mover company that first introduced the smartphones, they crated a revolution in the smartphone market. Apple has gained a competitive advantage by being the first mover company. Apple focuses on customer experience and quality. Apple launched the first smartphone with features like touch screen that were not available earlier in the market.

Samsung is a fast follower company as they plan their products per competition. They have launched smartphones in categories that closely compete with other brands. Samsung has developed products with competitive prices that will perform well in the market. They offer smartphones with features that are similar to the competitors with the same value as the market leaders.

Apple iPhone was a first mover with a lead in market and has crated a niche of loyal customers that look forward to better quality and performance. Samsung is a fast follower as they closely followed the development and launched products that are similar to the iPhone and offer a lover price than the market leaders. Both brands have a good demand in the market.