Well, certainly don't bother to compete on price that's for sure.
But is price what customers really care about?
For you - lead time seems to be just as important.
Price tends to be given as a reason by customers because it is easy to articulate.
if the UK firm was more responsive, had fantastic quality, were less bother to deal with, had great credit facilities so you could manage your cash flow and actually did what you needed to be done and assured you that if anyting went wrong they would be there to fix it immediately, you would be less inclined to go for the cheaper stuff from the other side of the world.

If we really have it in our heads that price is all that matters - then we should stop now and let China get on with it and we find something else to do.

But price is not the be all and end all.....

why is Waitrose the fastest growing supermarket in the UK despite being the most expensive and in a recession?

iphones and ipod are not the chepaest, or even the best of their product categories - but they sell millions? why?

cheers, //p.

Paul, I wish it was so straightforward mate.

I'll be honest and say I rarely come across customers who say 'you are more expensive than the others but you are better - here is the contract'.

I'm sure it happens, but the person doing that job (getting the best/cheapest deal) isn't always the person who has to deal with the poor serive or product when it arrives. The thing is though, he rarely cares - he's got a tick in his box under 'work procured within budget'.

Tides will turn in the next generation when the far east folk currently living 10 to a hut decide they want proper wages, satelite telly, and running water like the rest of the world has. Add rising fuel (shipping and haulage) costs, the continuing inflation within the far east economy and before long that £300 42" plasma telly might not be as cheap as it once was because the fella once making it can't work for tuppence a month any more.

Oh indeed - didnt say it was easy. it took BMW 35 years.
And youre right, in B2B - there are several people who influence the buying decision....but as the saying goes "no-one ever got fired buying IBM".
So the procurment person buying the cheap crap isnt the person you need to influence to get the price up...you need to find the REAL customer and scare the crap out of them about buying the cheapo shonky rubbish - that will change thier buying policies! Still very hard to do, mind.

Just if you compete purely on price...you're definitley screwed...so what's the alternative? In developed, commodity markets, its just a race to the bottom... why go there?
The point about Waitrose and Apple is that somehow, they HAVE managed to get their prices up and sell loads - it takes the whole organisation to do it well.

and the worst people to use to find out about the customer are the sales force...cos youre right...all they care about are sales volumes every month....any mug can give stuff away.

Consumer electronics is interesting.....
What an earth made people queue up all night to be the first to get the iPad, when two weeks later they could have just walked in an got one?
If we could work that out and stick it in a bottle - we wouldnt be having this discussion ole bean!

i've just done some work looking at sony - they're screwed because we dont care about technology anymore and all they want to do is sell us cleverer boxes - not enough nowadays. all that technology does is allow you to enter the market - we want services, a community network, upgradablility, repairability will come back because our devices will have our lives in them and we wont want to have the hassle of moving everything over to the next device every 6 months.

TV's are dead soon anyway they'll be killed of by broadband speeds and free content..we'll have a box and several different kinds of displays around the house - monitors, projectors, goggles, skull caps to zap the image straight to your brain, whatever etc. etc.

And every home will still have an 'only used once' ice cream maker tucked away at the back of the cupboard ;o)

that and a bread maker biggest ornaments in our Kitchen

I completely agree , I am in the double glazing industry , where what you pay can quite often bear no relation quality wise to what you get , the conservatory industry has been built on the fact that somebody invented multi wall polycarbonate , a lightweight alternative to glass , now however you will notice that the majority of consevatories have double glazing in the roof , have the roof manufacturing companies changed their roof systems to take into


consideration the massive increase in the weight of the glazing ?

No they haven't , why ? , because of the cost , I quite often will get a customer asking me for a price for a roof glazed with polycarbonate , and then ask for the price without the polycarbonate , I ask why ? , they say the customer might want double glazing in it , I then explain that the price with

polycarbonate is essentially the same as the price without polycarbonate if the

roof is having double glazed units fitted

Usually they will insist upon a roof designed for polycarbonate but unglazed , I refuse to supply them , others don't , and are quite happy to supply products that let alone are of inferior quality but are quite simply unsafe

I used to have a share in a supply company that as a matter of policy sourced everything we possibly could from Britain , that company failed , partly because we could not compete on price with other companies sourcing abroad

What's the saying , ' if you can't beat them , join them '

How much is petrol / diesel ?

rlhttps://www.petrolprices.comrl

dont you drive ?

About 800 miles a week ,why do you ask ?

most people who drive know how much it is.

I was getting the thread back on track we was buying Prom dresses from china

I was in the states last year and there is a big drive to buy products made in the US, there are signs everywhere giving the benifits of buying US made products with US flag stickers on products so the yokels knew what they were buying. It's crazy seeing people buying something for $10 when the same product from China which is litrally inches away only costs $4. But for all these people buying American unemployment keeps rising

You forgot the doughnut maker and popcorn maker