A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services

7Acting Against the Risk of Commoditization

7.1. Understanding the phenomenon of the offer commoditization

The commoditization of offer seems to be an inevitable phenomenon in the evolution of any market (Greenstein 2004; Olson and Sharma 2008; Reimann et al. 2010). While commoditization initially concerned raw materials, it gradually spread to product markets (consumer goods, capital goods), then to services (air transport, mobile telephony) and finally to skills (Holmes 2008). It is manifested in two concomitant realities: the offer becomes a simple commodity reduced to a few standard elements without any real distinctive character for the client, and the price becomes the almost unique element of the negotiation. No sector, no company is really immune to the comoditization of its offer.

7.1.1. Characteristics of a commoditized market

A commoditized market has four characteristics (Reimann et al. 2010):

• – Homogeneity of offers: the products and services are standard, the technologies are identical, there is no variation in the quality and performance of competing offers.
• – Price sensitivity: customers pay a lot of attention to price, choose based on price and look for the lowest prices.

• – Customer disloyalty: the costs associated with switching suppliers are low, make it possible for the customer to change suppliers quickly, easily and without risk.
• – Stability of the industry: customer preferences change very little, suppliers are stable, technology and product obsolescence ...