Product differentiation in the context of Market forces

In economics, a market is a composition of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations or infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labour power) to buyers in exchange for money. It can be said that a market is the process by which the value of goods and services are established. Markets facilitate trade and enable the distribution and allocation of resources in a society. Markets allow any tradeable item to be evaluated and priced. A market emerges more or less spontaneously or may be constructed deliberately by human interaction in order to enable the exchange of rights (cf. ownership) of services and goods. Markets generally supplant gift economies and are often held in place through rules and customs, such as a booth fee, competitive pricing, and source of goods for sale (local produce or stock registration).

Markets can differ by products (goods, services) or factors (labour and capital) sold, product differentiation, place in which exchanges are carried, buyers targeted, duration, selling process, government regulation, taxes, subsidies, minimum wages, price ceilings, legality of exchange, liquidity, intensity of speculation, size, concentration, exchange asymmetry, relative prices, volatility and geographic extension. The geographic boundaries of a market may vary considerably, for example the food market in a single building, the real estate market in a local city, the consumer market in an entire country, or the economy of an international trade bloc where the same rules apply throughout. Markets can also be worldwide, see for example the global diamond trade. National economies can also be classified as developed markets or developing markets.

In marketing, positioning is the mental perception of a product or brand by customers. Brand and product positioning methods include product differentiation, advertising, market segmentation, and business models such as the marketing mix.

The origins of the concept of positioning concept are unclear. Scholars suggest that it may have emerged from the burgeoning advertising industry in the period following World War I. The concept was popularised by advertising executives Al Ries and Jack Trout and further developed by academics Schaefer and Kuehlwein, who extended the concept to include the meaning carried by a brand. Positioning is now a regular marketing activity and forms part of overarching marketing strategy theory.

In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, the unit price for a particular good or other traded item in a perfectly competitive market, will vary until it settles at the market-clearing price, where the quantity demanded equals the quantity supplied such that an economic equilibrium is achieved for price and quantity transacted. The concept of supply and demand forms the theoretical basis of modern economics.

In situations where a firm has market power, its decision on how much output to bring to market influences the market price, in violation of perfect competition. There, a more complicated model should be used; for example, an oligopoly or differentiated-product model. Likewise, where a buyer has market power, models such as monopsony will be more accurate.

In marketing, a value proposition is the economic value that a company or product delivers to its market segment of customers. The phrase was coined by McKinsey consultants Michael Lanning and Edward Michaels in 1988.

Value propositions facilitate product differentiation and market positioning and form part of a company's overall marketing strategy. A customer's value proposition is the perceived subjective value of a product or service, and it may differ from the value proposition that a company has constructed as part of its marketing strategy.

In economics and law, exclusive dealing arises when a supplier entails the buyer by placing limitations on the rights of the buyer to choose what, who and where they deal. This is against the law in most countries which include the USA, Australia and Europe when it has a significant impact of substantially lessening the competition in an industry. When the sales outlets are owned by the supplier, exclusive dealing is legal because of vertical integration, where the outlets are independent exclusive dealing is illegal (in the US) due to the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, however, if it is registered and approved it is allowed. While primarily those agreements imposed by sellers are concerned with the comprehensive literature on exclusive dealing, some exclusive dealing arrangements are imposed by buyers instead of sellers.

Exclusive dealing can be considered as a barrier to entry especially in market that operate under imperfect competition, which is either Monopoly or Oligopoly where there is price and product differentiation as well as an imbalance of market power between incumbent, entrants and competitors due to the existing of vertical integrations within the market, leading to market inefficiencies.

Price discrimination, known also by several other names, is a microeconomic pricing strategy whereby identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same provider to different buyers, based on which market segment they are perceived to be part of. Price discrimination is distinguished from product differentiation by the difference in production cost for the differently priced products involved in the latter strategy. Price discrimination essentially relies on the variation in customers' willingness to pay and in the elasticity of their demand. For price discrimination to succeed, a seller must have market power, such as a dominant market share, product uniqueness, sole pricing power, etc.

Some prices under price discrimination may be lower than the price charged by a single-price monopolist. Price discrimination can be utilized by a monopolist to recapture some deadweight loss. This pricing strategy enables sellers to capture additional consumer surplus and maximize their profits while offering some consumers lower prices.