"Your competitive advantage ... resides in the minds of your customers"

"If Ivey Business School marketing professor Niraj Dawar is right, most of your competitors [Moi ici: E os membros da tríade] are still fighting the Industrial Revolution. They see their businesses as a collection of moving parts dedicated to producing stuff. If you can shift your perspective downstream and see your business as a fast-moving system dedicated to solving customers’ problems, Dawar says you’ll move up the value chain, from commodity supplier to trusted partner.
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Dawar revealed the simple question he asks to determine an organization’s place on the customer continuum: “What business are you in?.
“Most of the answers I get relate to either the product or the upstream infrastructure of production,” he says. In other words, most executives say their organizations make windows, or french fries, or run a tool and die shop. “We are very much product- and production-obsessed,” Dawar says.
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To probe an organization’s ability to understand market needs, Dawar poses a second question: “Why do customers buy from you rather than your competitors?” When pushed, executives often admit it’s not because their product is better or lower-priced; it’s due to factors such as buyers’ trust in the brand, or its reliability. “Customers are loyal because of the ‘how,” not the ‘what,’” Levitt noted.
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Your competitive advantage no longer resides within your four walls,” he says. “It resides in the minds of your customers.”
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So instead of asking your team, “What else can we sell?” Dawar suggests you ask, “What else do our customers need?”
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Now more than ever, the customer is king. If you don’t put customer insight at the forefront of your strategy, who else will?"

Trechos retirados do excelente "Make finding your customers’ point of thirst your competitive advantage"