問17
頻出度★★★
企業の商品戦略上留意すべき事象である“コモディティ化” の事例はどれか。
平成27年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問17
ストラテジ系経営戦略マネジメント › 経営戦略手法
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 17
- ア
正解 Commoditization is the situation in which, as a market matures, the differences in function, quality, and performance among each company's products disappear, so that from the consumer's point of view any maker's product is seen as the same “general-purpose product (commodity)”. Once the factors of differentiation are gone, the only standard customers use to choose a product is price, so companies get drawn into a price-cutting battle, that is, low-price competition, and their profit margins fall. Choice ア states that “other companies' products followed suit and the functional differentiation was lost, ultimately leading to a low-price competition”, which describes exactly this flow of “loss of differentiation → competing on price alone”, so it is a correct example of commoditization. Therefore the answer is ア.
Incorrectイ
The phenomenon in which a company's own new product takes away the sales of its own existing product with similar functions is called “cannibalization”, a problem of a company's products competing with each other. Commoditization is the disappearance of differences among products across the whole market, including other companies, so both the target and the cause are different.
Incorrectウ
Advertising having little effect and visibility not rising is a failure of promotion (sales promotion) strategy, not a story about lost product differentiation. Not selling because of insufficient awareness is a problem at a stage before the product has penetrated the market, and it has nothing to do with commoditization.
Incorrectエ
Damaging a high-end brand image by discounting frequently from the very beginning is an example of a failure of brand strategy and brand management (damage to the brand image). It is a story of a company destroying brand value — its own element of differentiation — through repeated price cuts, and it is a different concept from commoditization, where functional differences disappear across the market and price competition sets in.
ここがポイント
- Commoditization = as a market matures, differences in function and quality among each company's products disappear and the products become general-purpose goods. Price becomes the only axis of competition, which brings low-price competition and worsening profits. Countermeasures are differentiation strategies such as adding high value or building a brand.
- Telling apart confusing concepts: a company's new product taking sales from its own existing product is cannibalization, poor sales caused by insufficient advertising is a promotion strategy problem, and the loss of a high-end image is damage to the brand image; none of these is commoditization.
用語