Key buying criteria

• A product / delivery attribute needs to be a key buying criterion
  • Price
  • Quality
  • Aesthetics
  • Functionality
  • Availability
  • Consumer awareness
  • Visibility
  • After sales service
  • Having lower cost may result in better margins but is only a competitive advantage when the money gained is used for:
    • Better price
    • Better quality
    • More advertizing
    • Additional capacity that increases availability
  • Usually in any market segment only a very few criteria are likely important enough to serve as the basis of a meaningfull competative advantage:
    • In tubular steels for example this is 1) a measure of quality (third party testing reject rate) 2) local availability on the day required by the customers driling schedule
    • Texas Instrument brought down price of digital watches to a point where competition could no longer respond but the market cared more for aesthetics.