The argument that "peers are relatives and opponents are friends"

The old saying that peers are enemies has been circulating for thousands of years. It expresses an undeniable business fact: you sell similar products, have similar customer groups, purchase channels, etc.; When the market size is relatively fixed, more for him means less for you, and vice versa. In the harsh market competition environment, life-and-death battles among peers are common: the slit-throat war between color TV companies back then and the price-cutting turmoil among car manufacturers today.

However, with the progress of human society and the maturity of business operation models, the term win-win is increasingly appearing in our field of vision. Here we can refer to how some international companies cooperate to achieve a win-win situation in competition.

The first example is the two giants in the fast food industry: McDonald's and KFC. It may not be difficult for us to find that these happy lovers are always inseparable. If you find a McDonald's fast food restaurant somewhere, you can find a KFC fast food restaurant next to it or not far away. At first we were still laughing: two foreign companies. Selling similar products, facing almost the same consumer groups, they insist on being crowded together, door to door, face to face; the competition is confusing. But when these two enemies are developing in full swing and blooming all over China; when KFC announces its 1,000th chain store in China and McDonald's announces the opening of its 800th store; when we discover that we and our children When we have fully accepted this food culture and regarded it as a part of life; when our traditional fast food industry groans in pain between the two giants, we can't help but wonder: They should be competitors, why are they** * Have grown together and occupied most of our market? Another example is Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The situation is similar. They have occupied almost all the domestic carbonated beverage market and began to expand into other beverage areas. From this perspective, these competitors are more like in-laws who work closely together.

Why is this? There are three secrets to their success:

First, through competition, they can improve each other's product quality, market competitiveness and market adaptability, as well as the operating mechanism of the enterprise itself. Taking KFC as an example, its products have stronger market adaptability and more localized tastes. Such as its old Beijing chicken rolls, Portuguese egg tarts, etc. These are beneficial to the long-term development of the enterprise.

Secondly, competitive publicity can attract the attention of consumer groups and make corporate culture deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. When fast food entered China, it was not favored and accepted by the Chinese people. However, its rapid development was closely related to the Taiwanese drama-style advertising bombardment between the two competitors. When it comes to fast food nowadays, I am afraid that in addition to McDonald’s, people think of KFC.

Third, the expansion and scale accompanying competition will raise the threshold of the industry, making it difficult for competitors to enter the market later, thus forming a relative monopoly. In the past few years, domestic fast food also launched a vigorous counterattack, but later it disappeared. The main reason is that the market space is becoming saturated, consumption concepts are deeply rooted, and consumption habits have been formed; these invisible barriers are becoming increasingly difficult to overcome.

What is the relationship between peers? In my opinion, the relationship depends on you: she can be an opponent, when you compete with her; she can be a critical friend, who is like a mirror that directly reflects your shortcomings; or she can be a teacher, whose experiences of success and failure you can learn from ; Of course, it can also be a win-win or ***-win situation for partners!