Commoditization – Car rentals (courtesy: Doc Searls)

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 05 Apr 2005, 10:15 PM – 2 Comments

I am attending the Open Source Business conference today and tomorrow. Open source is a key focus area for our company CIGNEX and it was definitely a good decision to attend OSBC 2005.

One of the highlights of the conference was that I met with Doc Searls.

I wanted to meet Doc for a long time it was exciting to spend a few

minutes with him. It was an experience! We met for a short time but in

that time we talked about a topic that is of great interest to me:

de-commoditization.

Doc talked about this in his weblog today. The topic was commoditization in car rental companies.

Doc was talking about the “sameness” in the way all the rental

companies operate. Doc’s preference is to rent a Ford Focus from

Budget. Apart from the fact that Doc likes the car, one other reason is

that Ford Focus has a radio that can play MP3s. Interesting. It’s a

small change but what a way to distinguish and stand out from the crowd.

Here’s my $0.02:

The car companies, I am sure know that they are in a commodity

business. What if they learn a bit more about why their clients rent

what they rent and go out of their way to ensure that they get what the

car they like. I think there would have been other folks who didn’t

have a preference for Ford Focus and would have been happy with any

other car. If they had reserved a Ford Focus for Doc, I am sure he

would have been happy. Of course, Budget had to walk the extra mile to

get there and they didn’t

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