By Ahmad Al-Assad

Read the first paragraph for genuine ideas that will generate more revenues for your business. I have a lot of exciting ideas for different businesses, whether it was fast food, telecoms or any other business! Want to hear some? Here you go: Fast-food chains should have a playing area for kids. That way, children will use their "nagging powers" to drag the rest of the family members to the same restaurant, over and over again. What? Don’t you like that idea? You say it’s old? What about this idea: have kids’ meals as part of your menu with a toy in every meal. What? Old as well? Mmm, what about FREE delivery to homes?

All of the above ideas are not just old, but are also used by most fast-food chains. But once upon a time, when one fast-food restaurant offered toys with meals or had a playing area for the first time, it was then called a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage exists when a company is able to deliver the same benefits of its competitors at a lower cost (cost advantage) or deliver more benefits compared to its competitors (differentiation advantage). The only problem with the above mentioned competitive advantages is that they are unsustainable. This means that competitors could easily replicate and use the same ideas for their businesses. After a while, such ideas and services move from being competitive advantages to being for-granted services that are available everywhere; thus the need for ongoing new ideas arise.

A home delivery service used to be an advantage, and then everyone started providing home delivery for an extra cost. Then one restaurant decided to have it for free, so all other restaurants did the same. Then some restaurants promoted free delivery to homes, while keeping food hot using special portable heating bags (such as Pizza Hut). Other restaurants promoted that they "deliver late": free delivery till late hours. So now, free home delivery is not an advantage anymore, and soon "late delivery" and "hot delivery" won’t be seen as competitive advantages as well.

I remember in the late 90s, when I was hanging around with some friends and suddenly my friend’s cellular phone rang. Guess what happened. For the first time, the caller’s number appeared on the mobile screen. WOW! This was the time when the first cellular operator in Jordan was soft launching its new service: "the caller id". The operator was trying it out for free on some random postpaid numbers. You should have seen the look on our faces and how astonished we were with this unbelievable service; to know who’s calling before answering the phone! This advantage moved from being a special paid service for postpaid subscribers, to both postpaid and prepaid subscribers. The service then became free for all cellular subscribers. Nowadays, "caller id" is not even considered a service but rather a free always-available option. It’s impossible to find an operator that doesn’t provide this option. Today, cellular operators are trying to have a competitive edge over others by promoting new services such as mini calls, GPS, payments through mobile, video calling, mobile broadband, and other 3G and 3.5G services. Soon all these services will be considered normal options available with all operators for all subscribers, and operators would have to look for new competitive advantages.

The same goes for most unsustainable competitive advantages; they start exclusively for a group of people and for a certain price, then move to all groups for a lower price, then for all groups for free but still considered an advantage, and finally when all competitors adopt the same idea, it becomes a free option that is a must to have.

Another local example from Jordan: people now expect to get a free car-wash voucher with every oil change. This voucher is considered a must to offer rather than a competitive advantage, since the offer has been used by almost all gas stations in Jordan. One gas station decided to start accepting credit cards (and Visa electron cards) as an additional payment method besides cash. This is currently considered a competitive advantage, as the use of such cards is mushrooming and car drivers are sometimes out of cash; a competitive advantage today, yet a normal option once, it’s replicated by others.

Nevertheless, it goes without saying that first movers (the ones who come up with and implement the idea first) enjoy the fruits of such ideas more than the followers, and consumers would position first movers as pioneers, which moves us to what is called a "sustainable competitive advantage".

A sustainable competitive advantage is an advantage that is difficult to replicate by others, such as the position of the company in people’s minds. A company can’t just come and say "within a month, we’ll position ourselves in people’s minds as the pioneers in our field"! A quick example: we (most of us) are willing to pay 10 times the price of a no-brand shoe to buy an Adidas shoes. Why is that? Simply we feel that wearing an Adidas will make us feel better, happier and cooler! This is branding, which is a very important sustainable competitive advantage. Such advantages might take years to build. Hence, other competitors can’t just come and replicate these advantages.

Followers suffer from Atychiphobia, which is the fear of failure. That’s simply why they don’t act fast and enjoy the fruits of first-movers. How many times you thought of a magnificent idea, then said to yourself: "this would never work". And after a while you find your idea implemented by someone else and enjoy great success.

To wrap up, I would like to share with you this very true saying by Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot): "The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best".

We would like to add a note to the previous article written by Ahmad Al-Assad ‘What does mobile penetration mean?’ The Arab Advisors Group was used as source for the mobile penetration numbers mentioned in the article.