Smarter Pricing: How to capture more value in your market

Retreating may be the most profitable strategy

Fighting may not be the only option. Price wars take time, management focus and money resource. There is a further radical approach. Perhaps you do not fight, but you cede the market to value players and build new businesses via innovation and opportunity evaluation.

The diversified technology company 3M has made a virtue of inventing new products and markets. Speaking at the annual meeting of stockholders in May 2005, the Chief Executive Officer of 3M, James McNerney, highlighted innovation as one the company’s ‘pillars of growth’ with opportunities in track and trace, nanotechnology, separation and filtration, and sensors and diagnostics. As older products like videotape became commoditized, it ...