Examples include Chrysler Corporation, Contadina, CarMax, and the Charles Schwab Corporation. Compromises are concessions customers are forced to make. Unlike trade-offs, which are the legitimate choices customers make between different product or service offerings, compromises are imposed. For instance, in choosing a hotel, a customer can trade off luxury for economy. But the entire hotel industry makes customers compromise by not permitting early check-in.
Compromises mean it's the industry's way or no way.
That is why traditional market research rarely uncovers compromise-breaking opportunities. The authors propose a number of alternative approaches to finding the compromises hidden in any business. One approach is to look for the compensatory behaviors customers engage in because using the product or service as intended would not fully meet their needs. Other approaches include paying attention to performance anomalies and looking for diseconomies in the industry's value chain. If managers think like customers, the authors say, they will be able to find and exploit compromises for faster growth and improved profitability.