Beating the Commodity Trap
by Richard D’Aveni, Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School
If your business success is threatened by competitors who are lowering price, this is an excellent read. Research based, it is one of the better reads on price/value strategies.
D’Aveni defines three commodity traps and strategies to escape them. The first is deterioration (when low end firms enter with low-cost low-benefit offerings that attract the mass market); the second is proliferation (when competitors become locked into offering more benefits at the same or a lower price) and escalation (when new price-benefit positions proliferate, surround and erode a product’s value by targeting smaller segments of the customer base).
It is a bit of a technical read but has lots of examples which make the insights more understandable. I think this book is probably more directly applicable to larger businesses and brands. But if you like to have your thinking pushed about value and pricing, you’ll get your money’s worth.