“Exclusivity is a mystery that begets attention when used rightfully.”
Exclusivity has been there playing its part ever since the first product of any kind has hit the market. It is just that most of us took years to feel its presence and understand the underlying power it adds to a “Quality” product. Yes, I mentioned quality products instead of just products because if exclusivity is the power then quality is the source of it. You cannot expect exclusivity to work with a below par or mediocre product quality. This is because, at the end of the day, customer retention is one of the major reasons behind every sustainable and growing business.
Now, coming back to the exclusivity, you must be wondering what it is and how does it work? Is there any proof such as any product or company that has gained immense popularity or made those large profits from its sales? The answer is yes and you can see more about it in this post as you continue reading. But first, let’s start from where it is meant to be.
What is Exclusivity?
Exclusivity is a business strategy where a company limits the amount of supply of its product to draw a better price or value for it by giving a sense of exclusiveness to its customer. It is often done to create a niche where the company works towards identifying its target customer, post which it focuses upon upgrading their product quality as per their response. The goal behind this strategy is to build a base of customers who will always prioritize one company’s product over the many that are available in the market. By virtue of this, they even attain other benefits such as customer interest, saved cost on an advertisement, and brand reach, etc. Let’s take a look at them one by one.
Rise in Customer’s Interest Due to Exclusivity
One of the major reasons some of the tech giants and clothing brands such as Apple and Zara respectively are so high on this exclusivity technique of marketing it has continuously spiked interest in customers all around. Ever since Apple started rolling out its first iPhone the supply has been kept limited. And after receiving its users' stamp of a great quality product, they decided to go along with this marketing strategy. As a result, it created a sense of exclusiveness in its users who seemed pretty impressed to be amongst the few to hold a superior smartphone in comparison to most of their peers, family, or friends.
Apple Focused More on Selling to the Targeted Customers
This strategy has even helped Apple in fetching better prices from its product than a similar product built by other companies. The difference is clear as some of the companies focus more on selling their product to as many customers as possible. In comparison, Apple has mostly remained focused on selling its product to a target audience that they found over the years.
Zara Creating Urgency with Exclusive Marketing
Similarly, Zara too has kept its supply limited to make sure that the demand for their brand’s clothes remains more than the supply they are providing. They make high quality clothes and somewhere, intentionally, keeps sales in its limited fashion so that there is a chance that someone misses out on their designed cloth. When this happens, it plants a seed of urgency in the customers' mind that perhaps their clothes were too good and therefore it ran out of stock so soon.
As a result, by banking on the quality of their products and the urgency created with their exclusive marketing, they are able to charge slightly higher prices for their clothes without hurting their potential at all. And with this strategy alone, they are now amongst the most successful clothing brands in the world.
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Investing Less on Advertisements
Almost 8 out of 10 companies are reportedly known to spend a big chunk of their investments on their advertisement. Then there are companies like Apple who have always been on the minimalistic side when it comes to investing in an advertisement and yet becoming one of the most successful brands and companies in their fields. So, how do they do it? The answer is Exclusivity. Like we learned above, how exclusivity increases a customer's interest in their products, also helps them in saving tons of investment on advertisements. To them, these investments seem like an extra, unnecessary, and sometimes as a loss incurring strategy.
Since exclusivity can be termed as staying ahead on demand oversupply, it means the company that is practicing this technique are both dominating and controlling their shares in the market. And when this happens, people start talking about your product more than usual. Do they start discussing how a company is overcharging for their product? Why is it okay for them to charge or not charge that price for their product? If their products are indeed what they claim to be and so on. So, when a company enters this side of the discussion part it is obvious that more people are catching up with the details of their products with them finding the pros and cons of their products on their own. Based on this it is up to the customers whether they want to buy their product or not.
This whole process, nonchalantly, contributes towards the general awareness with the free word of mouth publicity ensuring there is a mystery built around their products. Thus, it even contributes to reaching a larger audience for which the company usually spends a lot of investing for more engagement and traffic.
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Rise in Exclusivity Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic
With that being detailed above, the Covid-19 Pandemic that has rattled the entire world unceremoniously into a darker phase has worked like a charm on furthering the practice of exclusive marketing strategy. As the pandemic forced the shopping mall and other outlets people relied on for their daily usable substances, they massively shifted towards online purchasing. Be it books, clothes, or any electronic device, etc, many people started more on learning about the product quality to place their purchases. This enabled the company to further strengthen its grip on its target audience as it kept providing its products in a limited manner. One of the techniques that supported this practice is the “Pre-booking” or the “Advance Booking” fundamentals.
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