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INTRODUCTION
How do companies compete in mature industries? How do competitive strategies change as industries mature? These questions are extremely important to American industries since most operate in mature environments.' Mature industries are: "of major significance both in terms of their relative numbers on the American economic scene and the resources they control."(5) Consequently, in the answers to these questions lies the future of much of the industry in the United States.
To be successful, a company must have a well-defined competitive strategy. In the choice of a strategy, consideration must be given to a variety of factors, one of the most important of which is the industry's position in its life cycle. Little empirical evidence is available concerning the business-level competitive strategies that are successful once an industry reaches the maturity stage. However, the existing literature does indicate that maturity is likely to require unique strategic postures that allow a company to cope with changes in the structure and nature of competition.
Discussions of the various stages of an industry's life cycle often describe products as becoming less differentiated and competitive strategy emphasizing costs during maturity.(11) However, in many basic industries the introduction and growth stages of the life cycle have long since past and products have been considered commodity-like for a long time. How does competitive strategy evolve over a long period of maturity?
In basic industries that produce industrial products, successful strategies during the growth stage can involve a production-oriented drive to reduce costs, secure raw materials, and increase market share. As an industry matures, successful companies may shift from production-oriented strategies to more customer-oriented strategies.
It is our belief that the concept of decreasing differentiation and increasing emphasis on costs during maturity incompletely explains strategic changes that occur over long periods of maturity. Certainly, a company must emphasize the maintenance of low cost in a mature industry. However, mature industries often lack the conditions required for maintaining an absolute cost advantage. Therefore, the most successful companies will be those that can simultaneously incorporate customer-oriented aspects into their overall strategy. Simply stated, in mature industries a strong cost position is requisite for operation, but not the primary source of competitive advantage.
We will investigate this idea here through a case study of...