Broad Cost Leader

"Compete based on the lowest price in many markets." This strategy has the most challenging (and yet most essential) need for accurate forecasting. Costs have to be kept down, and product quality must be consistent, while pulling in wide market segments.

Foodie example: McDonald’s, while not the industry giant they once were, are still doing...okay. Everyone still eats McDonalds, even if they don’t admit it. Everyone. Everywhere. Because it’s always the same salty, savory experience. And always cheap. Even their Meals are Happy.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What does it mean to "scale"?57 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop What does it mean to scale Well

00:07

here's a squid eyeball from space fifty miles away and

00:11

here's a squid eyeball from our boat the pesca squid

00:14

alia's from a mile away and here's a squid eyeball

00:18

from the view of our iphone we just dropped in

00:21

the water when the squids when right beneath the boat

00:25

scaring the crap out of us literally at one scale

00:28

we could barely see the ocean At another scale We

00:32

saw way too much eye ball scale and business has

00:36

the same kind of dramatic effect as operations come into

00:39

play That is it's One thing to serve lemonade drinks

00:42

to one hundred people a week It takes one stand

00:45

a permit grocery store visits worth of supplies it's completely

00:49

Another thing Toe serve a million drinks a week for

00:53

the latter You need infrastructure trucks storage and armies of

00:58

servers to you know serve Yeah that's what they do

01:02

someone's gotta get lemonades to the people So when a

01:04

company scales it means that they have gone from a

01:07

modest few million dollars of sales to sales of maybe

01:10

one hundred million and then a billion Some like that

01:13

The skill set for the former is a vastly different

01:16

set than for the ladder and some people are able

01:19

to do both Howard schultz founder and ceo of starbucks

01:23

We're looking at you well starbucks started off is just

01:26

one store in seattle in like five minutes later there

01:29

were a gazillion of them all over the world thinking

01:31

of coffee in any language So yeah that's How a

01:34

company scales from you little toe Big big Incidentally you'll

01:38

want to stay off the scale if you consume venti

01:41

caramel frappe with whip on a daily basis but on 00:01:44.897 --> [endTime] there so good

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)