In a mass market with predictable patterns of demand, it is more likely that efficiency will be the route to choose, but it also depends on who in the supply chain holds the greatest sway. Just In Time manufacturing strategies where the production flow lines of a component supplier and its assembler customer are coordinated to the extent that components travel directly into trucks for delivery straight on to the assembler’s line are examples where efficiency and effectiveness are found together. This may be achieved through the careful sharing of information, and it is in one sense anti-competitive since the parties are locked into a relationship – a strategic partnership – which is difficult to break. Provided flow lines can be designed so that one exactly feeds the other, there is the compensation of genuine economic benefit from the system; if not, and one firm wants to supply the other’s components, it has no choice but to hold stocks and deliver as required, never minding the cost. In fact, it may subcontract the delivery; one of the beneficiaries of JlT systems is the logistics industry.
If the two Es of efficiency and effectiveness approximate to trading off cost against availability, implicit within this is an assumption about quality. In fact, this can also be varied, giving rise to another pair of strategies: Excellence, where the quality is so incomparable that the customer will wait and then still pay a high price, and Economy, where things are cheap and available and, consequently, not up to much. There are plenty of circumstances where economy is a sensible strategy, such as in mass market fashions. Every season brings an uncertainty about exactly which of a range of styles and colours (as in the Benetton example) will capture the imagination. The younger fashion-conscious consumers do not have large amounts of money to spend, and will not wear this season’s clothes again, but they want ‘the look’, and they want it quickly. Excellence is the strategy pursued by the rock stars and other celebrities these consumers idolise, if you care to regard them as businesses (and you can bet their managers do).