Corporate strategy: The fatal bias: How cost competition harms performance

This article discusses managerial bias towards cost efficiency and the harm this can have for corporate performance.

Corporate strategy: The fatal bias: How cost competition harms performance

Jules GoddardLondon Business School

In this edited prizewinning article, Jules Goddard marshals impressive evidence to argue that the prevailing managerial bias towards cost efficiency is seriously harmful to corporate performance.

Overall cost leadership is not a viable strategy. This is the key discovery to have come out of the most extensive and thorough study of corporate performance ever conducted. Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed, both with Deloitte, examined the performance of more than 25,000 US companies over a 40-year period. Their aim was to identify companies with sustained levels...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands