Larger companies tend to save most because "they have more leverage with airlines" in negotiating volume discounts, said a GetThere spokesman.
American Express said that 63percentt of the companies surveyed are now negotiating volume discounts with preferred airlines, compared with 44percentt in the last survey two years ago.
The start-ups say that they attract travelers from small companies or entrepreneurs and others who do not have the clout to negotiate volume discounts from major airlines.
While many health care advocates are concerned that P.B.M.'s are not passing on rebates to their customers, they concede that P.B.M.'s have helped drive down the cost of prescriptions by negotiating volume discounts; those savings benefit customers.
They make up 80percentt of the market and offer the highest margins to distributors because chains and larger institutions like schools and hospitals "have people to study the books and negotiate volume deals," said Timothy Banning, a chef in Ventura, Calif.
By 1993, five years after starting Excel, Troutt was able to negotiate volume discounts with his network providers.
He made it work by negotiating volume discounts with manufacturers and keeping a tight lid on costs.
This enables new types of competitive barriers, as in Twilio's ability to negotiate volume discounts from carriers that no individual developer could obtain, or the volume pricing that Stripe enjoys by pooling payments across many developers.
COMPANIES THAT MANAGE GROUPS of physicians perform a simple but useful task: They do the paperwork, negotiate volume discounts for things like tongue depressors, make deals with health insurers.
Any company with fewer than 400 employees, Dell figures, is a small business there are about 9 million of them in the U.S. They're harder to reach than huge corporate accounts, which negotiate volume discounts and then tend to stick for years with whichever computer maker they choose.
