Microsoft’s Product Differentiation (Chapter 7)

Ch. 7 – Product Differentiation

This chapter focuses on business strategies where firms attempt to increase the willingness of customers to pay for the products or services.

Microsoft uses different strategies of product differentiation depending on the segment of buisness. I'll describe their strategy for each segment below:

Productivity & Buisness:

(Ex: Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, Linkedin, Dynamics)

This segment focuses on linkages as a way of product differentiation. Providing a product and service with linkages among functions within a firm as well as with other firms helps Microsoft's productivity & buisness segment be such a successful entity.  

Intelligence cloud:

(Ex: Azure, Windows Server, GitHub, SQL Server)

This segment's product differentiation focuses directly on the attributes of Microsoft's intelligence cloud features and product complexity.

Personal Computing:

(Windows client, Xbox, Bing, Display advertising, Surface laptops, tablets and desktops)

The personal computing segment is most successful at product differentiation through the relationship with its customers. Microsoft's PC products have a great reputation and allow for product customization for customers.