FEELING THE SQUEEZE? Business textbooks tell us that all industries inevitably slide over time into a commodity market. New industries start out with vanguard companies and novel products. Then as more competitors and products jump in, the consumer eventually judges that all products are “good enough” and competition shifts from features to price-admit it, no one wants to pay more than they have to for goods and services.

You’ve already seen this play out with computers. At first everyone wanted the features of an IBM or the user friendliness of an Apple. Now it’s: “How many gigs of RAM does it have and what’s your best price?” Even today’s base-priced laptops pack 100 times more computational power than the navigation computers aboard the space shuttle.

Some say it’s too late for the turfgrass seed industry – that we already compete more on price than on features. At the same time, costs and complexities of marketing are constantly increasing, driving businesses into a spiraling squeeze. And, in today’s down market, that slip-sliding-away seems even faster. However, it’s in the best interest of all involved in proprietary turfgrass seed to do what is necessary to help slow or stabilize our decay into commoditization.

imitation

Leads to

Sameness:

Commoditization of the

turfgrass Seed industry

Commoditization: When a product becomes indistinguishable from others like it and consumers buy on price alone rather than features.

 

New product innovation helps, but it is not the sole answer to commoditization. In research-based industries like seed, the classic response to commoditization is usually to create new products