Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
Also, if the product fills some new niche in the market, the first company bringing it to market blazes a path in the hearts and minds of customers. "Oh, so THAT's what I can use it for." That first company spends more on getting mindshare for such a product.
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But how many products are there, in the same industry, in the same decade, that manage to do fire up the consumer's imagination like this? It's of course possible, but it hardly seems realistic to assume that every first product in every new market will be
that notable.
First mover advantage gives you months if not years to profit from your innovative product before another company will have reverse-engineered it and produced sufficient quantities of it to challenge your supply chain, and your name will still be the first to come to mind when anyone starts talking about the product, so that's an enormous amount of good-will (and a head start, which will probably give you time to develop the product further while the first copier is still playing catch-up) that you can leverage.