“David vs. Goliath”: examining market entry of high-tech start-ups in the electric toothbrush industry

Abstract

The study of major challenges that hich-tech start-ups have while launching invented products on the electric toothbrush market as well possible strategies for successful market entry followed by sustainable growth of young ventures are presented in the master thesis. Global electric toothbrush market is highly dominated by a few major players namely P&G (Braun and Oral B) and Philips (Sonicare), who have been kept the lead positions on the market for the last 20 years. Young ventures entering the market meet certain challenges while competing with those giants, including the liability of newness and smallness, absence of generic and specialized complementary assets required for successful commercialization of invented technologies, going into litigation processes with giants and others. Different strategies depending on the appropriability regime (protection from legal and technical aspects) and required complementary assets for appropriating economic benefits from the invented technology are considered. According to the introduced study, in case of low appropriability regime and certain demand for invented technology from the market, start-ups can go alone and use a first-mover advantage, however with having quick exit strategy. In case of high appropriability regime, start-ups shall grow specialized complementary assets for sustainable growth on the market. For start-ups introducing technologies with outstanding cleaning performances such complementary asset can be a network of dental professionals supporting an invented product. For the start-ups bringing additional unique digital services to smart electric toothbrushes such network can also play the role of significant complementary asset, as collected data base about the users oral care habits combined with such a network integrated into the online platform can bring much higher value to a smart electric toothbrush.