In their seminal 1981 book, Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout articulated a fundamental reality of consumer marketing.

FORBES: Hello More Stringent CAFE Standards, Goodbye Lincoln

In Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition, Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin summarize the results of scores of case studies that confirm early work by Michael Porter, among others, who claim that price competition is destructive especially when the competition can easily match lower prices.

FORBES: How Companies Become And Stay Great

Within the half hour, I had caught three trout, and we set up on a nearby beach amid a rugged beauty straight from a Jack London novel: red sand, log cabin and fish baking over a crackling fire.

BBC: Kluane, Canada (Credit: Parks Canada/Fritz Mueller)