Editor's Focus

business owner I was visiting relayed his theory on what companies can offer to separate themselves from the competition.

He listed quality, service and price as the three traditional selling points, and remarked that, formerly, if a company could compete in two of those three categories it was positioned well to compete in the overall market.

As the century draws to a close, however, that may not be the case. Businesses—from restaurants and clothiers to steel makers and scrap processors—may increasingly need to rate high on all three scales to keep their current customers and attract new ones. This business owner, an automobile recycler, feels that time is now for his industry. "Before, it was pick two out of three. Now, you’ve got to offer all three," he remarked.

Have customers become more demanding and less loyal? Or are they just better informed?

The late twentieth century has been dubbed the Information Age, and it is easy to see why. Means of communication that were not yet invented in the previous century are now common to every office and factory.

Print publications offered one of the earliest means of comparison shopping, but added methods have increased rapidly. The telephone was among one of the first inventions that changed the way business transactions are made. The publishers of the Yellow Pages urged people to "let their fingers do the walking" decades ago, and savvy shoppers and negotiators did just that.

Sales representatives can still make convincing demonstrations of their product in person, but before that stage is reached, most prospective buyers will have used their telephone, their Internet connection, and possibly another innovation of late 20th century man—jet-propelled flight—to fully research a major purchase.

But even for the minor purchases and the day-to-day transactions, those conducting business can call upon information resources that allow for the type of instant comparison shopping that wasn’t possible just a couple of decades ago.

On the surface, this is particularly relevant on the price side of the picture. Information has always been a currency of its own when studying or negotiating pricing.

Perhaps less obvious is the power of information when comparing product quality or caliber of service. Colleagues and competitors in most industries—recycling included—have long had informal networks to trade stories and compare notes regarding quality and service.

But the updated means of transmission in the Information Age have expanded and solidified that network to include:

l a choice of specialized trade publications, many with their own websites

l long-distance telephone networks that make it more affordable to ask a critical question of a colleague on the other side of the country

l an interstate highway network and air travel system that makes it more cost-effective to attend meetings, seminars and expositions

l Internet message boards and e-mail formats that provide one more means of near-instant communication.

There is little need for anyone to make a buying decision based on a hunch and good faith. That may be a source of disappointment for those who have always operated in good faith, but it is a reality of the marketplace that business owners—like the auto recycler I spoke with—are probably wise to recognize.