Five years after the prestigious Encyclopedia Britannica hit its all-time sales peak of $650 million, sales had plummeted by more than 80 percent. Destroying this outstanding brand was not a set of thicker, more scholarly editions, but a thin CD-ROM called Encarta.
What can we learn from this? Britannica was selling for $2,000 a set. Encarta was free with new computers. Britannica’s market had always been a parent who bought its product as an investment in their children’s future. Those same parents were now buying computers as an investment in their children’s future…the encyclopedia came free. Could something happen to your organization that would put you out of business?
