All along, commodity sellers have focused their strategies on cutting costs and improving product quality to retain their competitiveness. That may not work any more. The cost curves are flattening and there is very little difference in product quality.
Faced with such a scenario, what does one do? In an article in the latest Mckinsey Quarterly, authors Marc Fischer, Heiner Frankemolle, Lutz-Peter Pape and Karsten Schween say the answer lies in focussing strategies on the customers