Quotes About Market

Skyrocketing insurance premiums are debilitating our Nation's health care delivery system and liability insurers are either leaving the market or raising rates to excessive levels.

Growth is another widely embraced goal, along with its sister goal, market share. Like ROS, these fail to account for the capital required to compete in the industry. Too often companies pursue unprofitable growth that never leads to superior return on capital. As Porter notes wryly when he talks to managers, most companies could instantly achieve rapid growth simply by cutting their prices in half.

I start with competition in Part 1 for the simple reason that if there were no competition, there would be no need for strategy. Competitive rivalry is a relentless process working against a company's ability to find and maintain an advantage.

A strategic positioning, especially when it has a high degree of focus, is sometimes seen as carving out a "niche." The implication of that word is that the market opportunity is small. Although this may sometimes be the case, even focused competitors can be very large. In the case of Southwest, what initially looked like a narrow niche has revolutionized the airline industry.

This, says Porter, is competitive convergence. Over time, rivals begin to look alike as one difference after another erodes. Customers are left with nothing but price as the basis for their choices. This has happened in airlines, in many categories of consumer electronics, and in personal computers, with the notable exception of Apple, the one major company in that industry that has consistently marched to its own drummer.

Companies only have to be "big enough," which rarely means they have to dominate. Often "big enough" is just 10 percent of the market. Yet companies under the influence of winner-takes-all thinking tend to pursue illusory scale advantages. In doing so, they are likely to damage their own performance by cutting price to gain volume, by overextending themselves to serve all market segments, and by pursuing overpriced mergers and acquisitions.

For Porter, strategic competition means choosing a path different from that of others. Instead of competing to be the best, companies can—and should—compete to be unique.

value is ultimately defined by customers.

The real point of competition is not to beat your rivals. It's not about winning a sale. The point is to earn profits.

than from the product itself.

Nomacorc clearly had what most managers would call a "core competence" in chemistry. But its competitive success in the wine market resulted from decisions to deploy those capabilities in activities that enhanced the design and manufacture of wine stoppers.

Powerful buyers will force prices down or demand more value in the product, thus capturing more of the value for themselves.

Entry barriers protect an industry from newcomers who would add new capacity.

Its low fares made flying an attractive alternative for price-sensitive travelers accustomed to driving or taking a bus. In the early years, a shareholder asked CEO Herb Kelleher if Southwest couldn't raise its prices by just a few dollars since its $15 price on the Dallas–San Antonio route was so much lower than Braniff's $62 fare. Kelleher said no, our real competition is ground transportation, not other airlines.

Blue Ocean Strategy

If rivalry is intense, companies compete away the value they create, passing it on

Why, that is just what he would say, Signor; but bad deeds will out, whether people like them to be known or not. This man comes to our town sometimes to market, and nobody knew where he came from for a long while; so they set themselves to work and found it out at last.

Witches don't do that sort of thing anymore! In the old days they even used to have to go out and catch their own bats and toads and stuff to make their powders out of. Now it all comes out of bottles.'...'My mother sends for everything from the Witches' Market. That's located near the Never-Never Land. They send her a catalogue and she orders from that.

casual stall at the market?

War, compared the selection process he went through in 1946 to a slave market: Everyone was ordered to the courtyard and told to strip. When your name was called you appeared before a medical team for a health inspection. The exam consisted of

What's a stag stick?" Meg asked, taking the packages. He stared at her for a moment. Then he put a fist below his belt and popped out a thumb. "Oh," Meg said. "Oh." He spun around and ran back to the Market Square. She closed the door, looked at the packages in her hands, and said, "Eeewwww.

Too many women means that men are in a good market position to enforce their preferred reproductive strategy and that strategy is likely to be one that minimizes paternal investment in favor of maternal investment.

unlike in the United States, there can be no place in Russia for a free market in religious life.

Tulips, we are told, were the center of life for the bloemisten, as those who grew and traded in tulips were sometimes known.