Whether Uber or Audemars Piguet welcome, in recent years, the star of start-up companies is a major thing in common is that they rely on to break the existing rules of an industry success. Associate professor at Harvard Business School Tillis Teixeira (Thales Teixeira) by 6-year analysis of the survey suggested that the basic principles of the business model of these companies is called decoupling (decoupling). In her new book "unlock customer value chain: how to decouple shaken consumer decision making" (Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption) in Teixeira explained the "decoupling" of the concept, as well as "decoupling" is how these companies use various industries to go. The latest issue of "The Economist" magazine conducted a presentation.
Typically, consumers buy products at least four stages. First, consumers will evaluate alternative product; secondly, they will select one or two down to the selection; again, they will make a purchase; Finally, consumers will consume goods. In the traditional business model, the first three stages will take place in a retail mall, consumers will see the TV or dishwasher mall provided to the price they can afford to choose their favorite products, then pay, the products to take home.
These four steps the customer value chain (Customer Value Chain), now many companies that rely destroy the value chain to succeed. A common example is that consumers to Wal-Mart and other shopping malls selection of merchandise, but they did not buy at the mall, but buy online. Amazon even create an application that allows the user to scan the bar code of goods, commodities, or upload a photo, you can see its online price. In other words, the product selection and purchase of these two steps had decoupled.
Other typical examples of the use of "decoupling" to the success of the car rental companies including hot Buka (Zipcar), to drive a car and maintenance decoupling; there is beauty subscribe to the electricity supplier brand Birchbox, skin care products to try and sample the selection of goods to the mall the process of decoupling. These were not trying to come from behind and existing companies to compete head or completely beyond the existing company, on the contrary, they are committed to *** consumer decision-making process.
Teixeira noted that "decoupling" is not a novel idea. Such as budget airline Ryanair have long flight and it is usually accompanied by decoupling of services and facilities. Passengers must pay an additional fee alone, such as seat selection and baggage handling.
"Decoupling" The advantage of this approach is that the only limit is the imagination industry innovation, rather than technical advances. For example, if you prefer a restaurant atmosphere, rather than its food. In theory, you can book a table at this restaurant, but food can be ordered from elsewhere, namely to pay for service and cooking.
Teixeira believes that decoupling is a bottom-up consumer-driven phenomenon. Successful companies will be keen to discover changes in consumer tastes, and then the appropriate link decoupling again profit from. But for today's managers, a new challenge is, if the efficiency of the service they provide or low customer satisfaction is not high enough, then the decoupling may be their own.