How can companies avoid cannibalism

These listings also give your products more real estate than they would otherwise have if they were just on your eCommerce site. These three SEO tactics will take more work than simply letting Amazon take over, but can boost your traffic, rankings, and sales in the long run. Most retailers are overwhelmed at the idea of creating one set of product descriptions for their items, much less two per product.

However, these unique product descriptions can help your brand rank well in the SERPs and give your website listings the attention they deserve. Some brands have reportedly doubled their traffic over the course of a year just by creating unique product descriptions for their products.

You want to optimize for the same keywords in your product descriptions and create high-quality content for both, but provide deeper analyses and information on your main site. This way, customers will turn to your website to better understand the products before they buy it. This is particularly valuable for more expensive items that customers might research heavily before buying. A great example of a website versus marketplace product descriptions is ThinkGeek.

The company develops product descriptions based on their brand voice but sends different ones through their eCommerce data feed to match what the average Amazon shopper expects. You can see the differences for their Bag of Holding on their website versus on their Amazon listing. As you can see below, these efforts are paying off. The company uses the marketplace to generate sales while preventing Amazon eCommerce cannibalism with unique copy. One form of content that both Google and your customers will appreciate are reviews and ratings.

Some companies take online reviews to the next level. Some brands, like JCPenney, encourage customers to share whether the items run large or run small to help buyers make more informed decisions. Other companies actually encourage customers to upload photos wearing the items and describe their measurements so buyers can see how an item fits on a real person rather than a photoshopped model.

Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Corporate cannibalism is when a product sees a decrease in sales volume or market share due to the release of some new product that has been introduced by the same company. This downward pressure can negatively affect both the sales volume and market share of the existing product.

Corporate cannibalism is also referred to as market cannibalism. Corporate cannibalism occurs when companies introduce new products into a market where these products are already established. In effect, the new products are competing against their own incumbent products. If the new circumstances are handled properly and on purpose, the company will begin to see a shift from the old product line to the new one.

The company may even end up tapping into a whole new market with its new product. Any drop in sales in planned corporate cannibalism is usually expected. Most companies that fall prey to it may have to stop making a product and may thus lose a loyal customer base. The sales drop in unplanned corporate cannibalism is normally unexpected. While the idea of corporate cannibalism may conjure up negative images, it can, at times, be a beneficial strategy.

If, as we said in the last section, it is planned, it can provide some good results for a firm. One of the benefits of employing corporate cannibalism as a business strategy is to stay on top of the competition. For example, Company X may have released a new laptop on the market with a great screen and lots of features. Company Y may end up being forced to do the same to remain competitive, even though it may already have several other laptops without as many features out on the market.

Secondly, companies may also find it useful to help make small improvements to already existing products. Sales may drop for a good or service, but releasing a new and improved version of it may help boost revenue. Take for instance Kit Kat bars in Britain. According to the Guardian, sales were estimated to have dropped by more than 5 percent between and If it is not done properly, corporate cannibalism can have a huge financial impact on a corporation. Select personalised content.

Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Market cannibalization is a loss in sales caused by a company's introduction of a new product that displaces one of its own older products.

The cannibalization of existing products leads to no increase in the company's market share despite sales growth for the new product. Market cannibalization can occur when a new product is similar to an existing product, and both share the same customer base. Cannibalization can also occur when a chain store or fast food outlet loses customers due to another store of the same brand opening nearby.

Also referred to as corporate cannibalism , market cannibalization occurs when a new product intrudes on the existing market for an older product. By appealing to its current customers instead of capturing new customers, the company has failed to increase its market share while almost certainly increasing its costs of production.

Marketing cannibalization is often done unintentionally when the marketing or advertising campaign for new products draws customers away from an established product. As a result, market cannibalization can hurt a company's bottom line. However, market cannibalization can be a deliberate strategy for growth. A supermarket chain, for example, might open a new store near one of its older stores, knowing that they will inevitably cannibalize each other's sales.

However, the new store will also steal market share from nearby competitors, even driving them out of business eventually. Cannibalization as a marketing strategy is generally frowned upon by stock analysts and investors, who see it as a potential drag on short-term profits. As companies design their marketing strategies, marketing cannibalization needs to be avoided, and individual product sales need to be closely monitored to determine if cannibalization is occurring.

For example, when looking at the fast expansion of chains such as Starbucks or Shake Shack, these companies constantly weigh the opportunities for sales growth with the risks of local market cannibalization. One familiar type of cannibalism occurs every year when companies like Apple and Samsung release new versions at the expense of older models.

Although these new releases cut into sales of the older models, which may still be popular, they also attract new buyers from other brands. Many retailers regularly put products on sale, either to increase cash flow or to make room for newer products. But regular discounts can have a cannibalizing effect, if buyers start to expect routine discounts. If customers refuse to buy items at full price, the retailer may be forced to offer increasingly steep discounts.

Many traditional retailers now offer online sales, which could come at the expense of their brick-and-mortar stores. However, these losses could be a net benefit, if online shopping attracts new customers from outside the retailers' normal base. In order to prevent new products from cannibalizing on older ones, it is important to consider how the two products are branded. Products with similar pricing and placement—such as new flavors or added features—pose a high risk of market cannibalization, according to the Nuremberg Institute for Marketing Decisions.

This risk can be reduced through more distinctive branding—for example, creating inexpensive "fighting brands" to compete with low-cost competitors without cannibalizing from the premium brands.

New offerings can also be carefully timed to avoid disrupting older offerings. Sometimes, market cannibalism cannot be avoided. Every major department store now operates an online store, knowing full well that its sales can only cannibalize its brick-and-mortar business. Their only other choice is to allow internet retailers to continue taking market share away from them.