The Illusion of Choice: Why Your Competitor Might Actually Be You

You walk into a street with five mobile phone shops. Each one sells a different brand. You spend an hour comparing prices, features, and offers before picking one. You feel like you made a smart, independent choice.

Here is the twist. Four of those five brands may belong to the same parent company. You did not choose between competitors. You chose between costumes worn by the same actor.

This is called the flanker brand strategy, and once you understand it, you start seeing it everywhere.

How the trick works

Think of a small food street in any Indian city. One restaurant becomes famous for a certain dish. Crowds grow. Waiting time increases. Naturally, other shop owners notice the crowd and open similar restaurants nearby, copying the menu and the style. This new competition splits the customer base and slows down the original restaurant’s growth.

A smart original owner sees this coming. Instead of waiting for outsiders to steal the business, the owner opens two or three more restaurants nearby, under different names, with slightly different menus and pricing. Customers think they have five different choices on that street. In reality, four or five of those shops send their profit to one pocket.

The owner has not lost customers to competition. The owner has captured both ends of the customer’s decision. Whichever shop you pick, you are still paying the same person. This is not illegal. It is simply smart shelf control. But it does raise an honest question: is the customer really choosing, or just picking a flavour of the same choice?

The mobile phone example

This exact strategy plays out on a much larger scale in the smartphone market. Many buyers in India spend days deciding between Oppo, Vivo, Realme, iQOO, and OnePlus. Reviews are compared, camera specifications are studied, and prices are negotiated, as if these are five separate companies fighting for the same customer.

They are not.

All five brands trace back to one Chinese parent group, BBK Electronics, founded by businessman Duan Yongping. Realme was originally built as a spin-off of Oppo, and iQOO was built as a spin-off of Vivo. Each brand runs its own marketing, its own advertisements, and even competes on paper for the same buyer. But the profit from nearly every sale, whichever brand wins your money, flows back into the same corporate family.

Why would one company want its own brands to compete with each other? Because it removes risk. If a customer gets tired of Vivo’s pricing, or dislikes Oppo’s camera style, the same buyer often switches to Realme or iQOO instead of walking away to Samsung or Apple. The parent company keeps the customer inside its own house, no matter which door they enter through.

It is not just phones

Once you notice this pattern, it shows up across many industries in India and abroad.

In supermarket aisles, a shopper comparing shampoo brands may believe they are picking between rivals, when several of those bottles are made by the same multinational company, simply priced and packaged differently to appeal to different income groups and hair types.

In the airline business, a traveller comparing a full-service airline ticket against a budget airline ticket may not realise that both airlines are sometimes owned by the same parent group, one built for business travellers who want comfort, the other for price-conscious travellers who want the cheapest seat. Either way, the same company earns from the trip.

Even in India’s detergent and soap market, a shopper choosing between a premium-priced bar and a budget-priced bar in the same store may be paying two different prices to the exact same manufacturer, who simply built two products for two different kinds of household budgets.

Why this matters to you

None of this is illegal or even unusual in business. Companies are allowed to build multiple brands. But the strategy depends on one thing working in their favour: your assumption that different names mean different owners and different quality.

The moment you check who owns what before buying, the illusion weakens. You may still buy the same product, but you buy it with clear eyes, understanding that you were never choosing between five options. You were choosing between five doors that led into the same room.

The next time you spend an hour comparing brands, ask a simple question before comparing prices and features: are these companies actually competing with each other, or are they simply competing for my attention while sharing the same bank account?

That one question can save you both money and the illusion of a choice that was never really yours to make.

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