The Law of Division - Law #10 under the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
“Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories”. As a result of the ‘Law of Category‘, the marketing arena will always be an ever expanding sea of categories.
Evolution has taught us one thing, ‘as a country or a state develops, it is bound to be divided into multiple independent countries and states’. All of these divisions in the past were manmade and are credited to one or the other reason, but the outcome is the same – Divided into independent pieces. The same is with any industry segments or verticals or categories however you would want to call it. As an industry segment matures and more players converge, the segment is further divided into verticals with individual market leaders under each and so on. As the verticals matures and the market grows, it is further divided into categories with individual market leaders and so on. The categories are further divided into sub-categories and so on. There is no end to this as we can see it. Until there are people buying products and services, there will be people who will be selling them. When there will be people selling them, there will be competitors. When there are competitors, each one of them would want to be a market leader in their own line of business and will therefore try to develop a uniqueness in what they have to offer. These unique and new ways of offering products and services may therefore be considered as a new segment or vertical or a category or a sub-category and so on.
A relevant and recent example would be that of the e-commerce business in India. What started as e-commerce got divided into e-retailers, e-banking, e-auctions, e-ticketing, etc.. Further to this, e-retailers got divided into e-retailer selling groceries therefore e-groceries and similarly e-books, e-electronics, e-lifestyle, e-fashion and so on. E-fashion has further got divided into men’s fashion, women’s fashion, lingerie and kid’s fashion and so on. It has to be seen if there will be any further classification beyond these. But for that to happen, the most important element is that the principal or primary component needs to be strong & stable and only then the secondary corresponding components will be born.
With the current market being revolutionalized with technology advancements such as going Digital and the open market that is Global, anything is possible. Other progressive technologies and the globalisation affect factors like the growing population, increasing traffic and the lengthy line in the billing counter has all contributed directly in increasing the Digital adaptation to a great extent.
At this point, one thing is clear, as long as there is a market that is stable and thriving, further divisions of categories will happen and successfully sustain the division.
