When you’re selling what everyone else is selling, it might give the impression you need to match the rest.
1 way to do that —actually, how the vast majority sees it— is by cutting costs down.
It relies on 2 models:
Mark-up / mark-down prices (a way of cost-plus pricing). Coming from the industrialized age of business and mass production industries. A method vastly used and (still) taught as a core subject at universities.
Shareholder value theory. Maximize the gap between price and costs, as long as the shareholder makes it bigger. Whatever it takes.
They’re both focused on cost reduction. On how to get more efficient and do things at scale.
It’s taken from how commodities are traded.
BUT!
Here’s the thing: you’re not a commodity.
You can maximize profit in several ways —without the need to cut costs down.
It’s about the proportion price/cost.
When you detach cost from effort, that proportion grows faster.
And when you detach effort from price, that ratio is bigger.
Use that as your advantage.