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Keep Your Customers Happy but Disorganized to Prevent Buyer Power

September 14, 2016 By Brian Viard

The bargaining power of buyers

As a seller, you may often encounter a situation like this: your customers gather and discuss the product they want to buy and one day they come to you and form a group, bargaining. As a result, you have to offer them discounts and other benefits. Harvard economist Michael Porter formalized this idea, called “buyer power,” in 1979. “Buyer power” is separate from the competition that you face and you should be careful to distinguish the two. Even if you face little competition, if your buyers are powerful then you are in trouble. Read our article to find out a solution.

Filed Under: All Articles, Best Practice, Consumers, Invisible Hand Revealed, Strategy Tagged With: 5 Ps of Marketing, buyer power, Consumer Behavior, Michael Porter

Rita Gunther McGrath on the End of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

December 16, 2013 By Neelima Mahajan

Strategy expert Rita Gunther McGrath says that the days of sustainable competitive advantage are long gone. Instead, companies should focus on transient competitive advantages. In 1979, the high priest of management thinking Michael Porter laid out the building blocks of the idea of competitive advantage in a seminal Harvard Business Review article titled ‘How Competitive Forces Shape […]

Filed Under: All Articles, Best Practice, Conversations, ExpertSpeak, Management, Strategy, The Thinker Interview Tagged With: Business Strategy, Competition, Competitive Advantage, Michael Porter, Rita Gunther McGrath, Slider, sustainable competitive advantage

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Information, analysis, and interviews about the Chinese economy and doing business in China, from the people who know it best. Presented by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, China's leading business school.


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  • Looking Back at 2020: An Extraordinary Year for CKGSB
  • CKGSB Partners on Penn Wharton China Summit and Launches New MBA Scholarship

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