Shaping product strategy at the world’s leading lighting brand
My year-long competitor analysis project
Signify, formerly known as Philips Lighting, is the leading global brand for lighting products, whom I worked with for nearly 3 years on their smart lighting range as a product marketeer.
As my former manager, Andreas says:
“Judit’s contribution to the company over these years significantly helped the strategic positioning of our products” – which is no surprise given my keen ability to quickly understand market dynamics, product positioning and to emphatize with users’ needs.
My biggest flex: I mapped their competitive landscape from scratch, highlighting the strategic advantage of Signify’s products through thourough market research. After presenting to the C-level management, they found my insights so significant, they saw the need for an ever wider Nordic level competitor analysis and asked me, to be the leader of this project.
Mind you – I was a student assistant – but clearly not your average student worker. I put in dedication and extra hours to bring this year-long project to life, which has left significant impacts on their branding strategy to this day. The physical product’s positioning has been adjusted according to my findings, as well as the software product’s strategy. For NDA reasons I am not allowed to further discuss details – but trust me, it was good.
*and thanks to my MSc in Technology, I am not only able to do this for smart lighting companies, but basically any other technology or business*
So more in depth about my approach to the project:
Why was the competitor research needed?
The company has not conducted a competitor anaylsis for the Nordic region since they published their smart lighting product range. Therefore the research was needed to be all-encompassing.
What was my process and criteria for research?
I mapped 25+ competitors in the Nordic region, researching and understanding the following traits of each company:
What technology their smart lighting system is based on, how it works
What is their digital marketing strategy (social media, website, tv ads, customer feedback and product test blogs.
What is their in-store presence like (where in the store they are positioned, what sort of POS marketing they use, and my strategic impressions of it)
What is their pricing strategy
Having understood the different technologies and business strategies of smart lighting from my initial research, I discussed with management and decided that 3 different analyses were necessary as different technology lines needed different approaches: [Tuya private label brands, gateway-based brands, and wifi or bluetooth based brands]. These three research lines were then analyzed in the four markets of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The criteria for the research was based on the 4 P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
After the project was concluded, to keep a continuous eye out for competitors I collected the available data of smart lighting app downloads from almost all competitors and designed a system which showed reliable and realistic data of the current market —> which helped us understand the users’ product preferences.
So what was the outcome, you may ask? Well, the research was highly valued by the company, as they have shaped the future of their product positioning and branding strategy based on the findings from my research. Throughout the research process I heavily used my expertise in market anthropology and added strategic insights that I thought were valuable to the business, which I believe is THE unique quality I bring to any business.