Comments on: Substitutes vs. Alternatives – Understand your Competition Better

By: Imtiaz K

Imtiaz K — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:07:15 +0000

Hi Ashish,

I am my apps are presently in a transition. Going to be pure play SaaS system in 12 weeks. We sell ERP and learning systems.

Imtiaz

By: Ashish

Ashish — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:13:42 +0000

Interesting question – if you look at SaaS, your typical alternatives could be a manual process, an offline process that basically gets the same thing done.
What kind of apps do you sell?

By: Imtiaz K

Imtiaz K — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:40:27 +0000

Hi Ashish,

Your thought is simply amazing…Actually is giving a new dimension to my marketing strategy.
If I am selling SaaS service, I assume my competition is with substitutes and alternatives as well. Substitutes for my system are in house applications. But I am wondering what would be an alternative?
Dont you think they (Substitution and Alternative) are actually the same?

I am just thinking loud…

Imtiaz K.

By: Kasi

Kasi — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:21:28 +0000

So true Ashish.

Sometimes you never knew the existence of your alternatives (either by ignorance or arrogance) and you keep producing and enjoying the market and suddenly you see the alternatives grown as substitutes and then one day you become substitute of them….finally since he substitutes and alternates your product you become non-existent over a period of time

Hope you will enjoy this !!!

By: Abhaya Agarwal

Abhaya Agarwal — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:37:04 +0000

Very good point Ashish. In fact, to put it another way, substitutes may actually be beneficial because all of them are trying to push for the same new idea/things and growing the market. Alternatives actually eat into your market size itself. Something like GnR’s style music becoming obsolete due to arrival of Nirvana