Table of contents:-
What is First Mover Disadvantage?
First mover disadvantage is referred to the challenges and obstacles that are faced by any company that is creating a new business with a new product.
First mover is the first entrant in the market of the product that is being introduced.
This means that there is no pre-set market for the product, and the company has to start from scratch to educate the public about the product, it’s capabilities, services or uses, what problems does it solve and also to make them aware of the problems that your product can solve.
For example- consider the case of starting up an E-commerce business in a time when there is no such established market. Your company is the first in a certain domain of potential customers.
The most basic challenge (first mover disadvantage) will be to convince the people that they can order a product online just by looking at its picture and description and placing the order by a click, devoid of the physical experience of real shopping.
To win their trust, whatever they are seeing on the screen will be delivered to them in the best original quality.
Disadvantages
Listed below are some major disadvantages associated with first mover:
- It may happen that a first mover may successfully educate the market about the new product by investing time, money and other resources, but lose the market to the competitor(s) that come after the creation of the market.
- More prone to mistakes and no other failed or successful model to learn from.
- Tough to tweak errors in business strategies as compared to later entrants.
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FAQs
First mover is a service or product that is the first to market with a product or service. First movers in a market are usually followed by competitors that try to capitalize on the first mover’s efforts in creating the market.
First Mover advantage means all the advantages that a new entrant that introduces a new product has over the later companies. These are the early-stage benefits that these new entrants get.
Collectively first mover advantages and disadvantages are the pros and cons for a first mover.
- It takes more effort and resources to establish the new type of product in the market.
- More prone to mistakes.
- Error tweaking is difficult and there is no existing model to learn from.