I love it when my work and home lives collide around a lesson. In my free time, I like to run. When I get the chance, I read a number of running blogs and magazines. I recently ran across an article that discusses how specialty running shoe stores have had to evolve to survive. At the time, I couldn’t help but think how well it synced up with the commoditization post I wrote a few months ago. Here is a completely different setting, but the message seems to ring true − commoditization forces service providers overall to tune their solutions to meet the needs of the target audience.
Tuning an offer to meet a target audience is never simple. Information is never perfect and time is always a factor. Broadly, though you can establish a framework. The running shoe article establishes a spectrum of price versus service. I don’t think that’s unfair way to look at differences. Price always seems to be on one end of the spectrum and service/quality is a fair stand-in concept for the other. I make that same decision in almost everything I do in every aspect of my life every day. It influences the car I drive, the gas I buy, the television I watch, etc.
It’s an incredibly personal thing. I remember an article in Outside Magazine where Laird Hamilton remarked something about how amazed he was how many people sat down in front of a $3000 TV and ate a $3 cheeseburger. Vastly different priorities rule our world. For me, the more central to who I am that a thing is, the more critical it is to me, the more time, research and ultimately, money, I spend on it. So when I think of my target audience for colocation services, it’s the people who are serious about their business; the people for whom availability is critical; the people who intend to grow; the people who understand that when I started talking about my target audience actually being people, they appreciated it.
What was the big differentiator for you in your last IT purchase?
For more information on what makes Internap colocation different from the rest visit our colocation features page.
