According to a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study published in the early 1980’s an enterprise has three bases for its strategy:
- Best cost advantage
- Service Advantage
- Technology Advantage
Examples could be:
- Best Cost Advantage: Walmart and IKEA
- Service Advantage: Jet Blue and Trader Joe’s
- Technology Advantage: Tesla and Apple
Within the laboratory products market there are many examples of this broad umbrella of strategies.
The BioPharm market has a number of technology-based companies: Biogen, Merck, GSK. In the laboratory products market examples are Mettler-Toledo and Corning.
Cost advantage companies in the laboratory products market are many of the private label businesses such as Labcon and Kord-Valmark.
Service businesses in the Scientific Products market are the distributors serving the scientific, government, academic and industrial customers. It is routine for them to have service levels exceeding 98% on orders with over 20 line items from among more than a million SKU’s.
Oh, and overlay the idea that “Size Matters” into your thinking. That’s a future topic.