"What companies are finding is that offshore can be good for generic, commodity services," said Howard Rubin, executive vice president of the Meta Group Inc., a consulting firm.
Respondents noted that the advertising promotes beef as a generic commodity, which, they contended, impedes their efforts to promote the superiority of, inter alia, American beef, grain-fed beef, or certified Angus or Hereford beef.
Mussa and Rosen (1978) examine the provision of a generic commodity that can be produced in a number of different varieties.
De-Commoditize: If you're just another reseller of a generic commodity, you better have a pretty clear advantage outside of price…but these are often tough to come by.
(Companies like G.E., Nike and Apple learned early on that the real money was in the creative ideas that can transform simple physical products far beyond their generic or commodity value).
(Companies like G.E., Nike and Apple learned early on that the real money was in the creative ideas that can transform simple physical products far beyond their generic or commodity value). Similar forces have ripped through professional services, particularly accounting, a profession that, until recently, was little changed from its 16th-century roots.
Thanks to patent expirations, big sellers like Zocor, Pravachol and Prozac are available in generic versions with commodity pricing.
If Novartis, a highly profitable research-based company, had made the decision to bound into the low-profit commodity generic medicine business back then instead of now, it may well have been unable to mobilize the vast amounts of capital it needed to develop the breakthrough medicine Gleevec.
They are generally procured by trade names, although generic specifications exist for commodities such as PVC or plastic-lined pipe.
