Satoru Iwata Quotes

In a marketplace where it's so easy to produce products, where your competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added value is the identity, the idea behind your brand.

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple's product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.

In the past, the U.K. got away with selling things that weren't unusual. Now it's no use trying to export without having something that's unusual and better.

Auto companies need to quickly separate the stuff that will be swallowed by commodity from the brand stuff.

I look at companies as price-players or quality-players. The only way to go with J.Crew was quality.

Our employees and competitors thought we were docile. We want to be defiantly disruptive. I don't mean necessarily by launching price wars but by being the best at the basics - having the best customer service, the best on-time performance, the best coffee - in a thoughtful, not a testosterone-laced, way.

We are market based and have to differentiate our product in many ways; pricing isn't the only one.

Never ever compete on prices, instead compete on services and innovation.

I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don't want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse. We must maintain a value proposition to our customers as well as differentiate the Starbucks Experience. That is the key.

When looking at trends I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?'

I don't think I have to combat Airbnb. It is like comparing Tiffany to a shop that sells things for one dollar.

When you can't compete on cost, compete on quality.

You need to define yourself in the marketplace.

I think any company should compete on the quality of their products, their prices, the novelty they can produce, their services, because that would be fair competition.

Hardware ultimately is a scale game, and it's a differentiation game. If you are literally selling products that are completely undifferentiated, like x86 servers, why would anybody pay you for that?

I think the idealism has always been marketing. Even back in the early days of Apple and the 'pirate' mentality, they were building a computer that they wanted to differentiate from IBM and Microsoft.

You have to do things right to stay in business, and that's not easy, and that's a choice on a daily basis, the choices you make in how to run your business and how to have a point of differentiation and how to be true to your brand, how to offer something that people want and to offer something that you love.

If you're entering anything where there's an existing marketplace, against large, entrenched competitors, then your product or service needs to be much better than theirs. It can't be a little bit better, because then you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer... you're always going to buy the trusted brand unless there's a big difference.

You really need a unique selling proposition, and people need to care about that unique selling proposition.

Often, I'm sitting opposite a client, and I'm thinking, 'How do I convince him to not copy the best-selling product out there?' And sometimes I don't know. Really, it's smarter to be a thief.

We compete with Dell and HP. Now, we are going to compete with Sony and Best Buy. Are we going to be like Best Buy? No. Are we going to be a small Dell? No. We are going to be uniquely Gateway.

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

We've got a great value proposition against Chromebooks, we are not ceding the market to anyone.

We're learning a lot from large international competitors... As we go international, we're looking to add something unique to the market. And so when we do go international, it won't just be as a taxi service.