
Competition - Play The Long Game!
"Continuous innovation in offering, as a culture, by listening to consumer better, will ensure that we don't need to focus on outwitting the competition. We will become our bigger competition than those in the marketplace."

Understandably you are in a category where there are others who have been able to put pressure and create dissonance on your offer. What you need here is to have a short term and a long term approach. In the short term you will have to respond to your competition by ensuring you retain your customers. That means that you will need to match the offer that the competition has or out smart them in their own game. This will mean that you are not going to make your expected margins for the short term. You will need to trade your profitability targets in favor of retaining your customers for this period. But at the same time, in the context of the long term play, you will need to look for creating indigenous value differentiation with innovation and /or organic value extension in the product range. For inspiration you do not need to look beyond yourself. The very person who got the business up till here will also take you to your goal. Just pay attention to your intuition and be courageous. This will communicate at one level that the business is constantly looking for adding value to the consumers which is great for building trust with the consumers. At another level the business will also be seen as a constantly innovating outfit that is focused on evolving the category. Ultimately, you need to understand and agree, you are creating this business for long term success.