I recently moved to a place where there are gas stations lining both sides of the streets down every block.

It reminded me that gasoline is one of the most common commodities that we all use.

It’s a commodity because we don’t need to see it before we buy it. Gasoline is essentially the same regardless of who we buy from.

As with most commodities, gasoline shares these challenges for the business owner:

• It’s totally price driven
• There is a lot of competition
• The pricing is exposed
• The customer is in control

It would seem that the price of gasoline gets driven down by the customer instead of being driven up

A customer buys from who has the lowest gasoline price, not the highest, which is good for the customer, not the business owner.

How could we make gasoline unique?

Maybe the business owner could offer bells & whistles by giving away free coffee or donuts with the gasoline.

Or use catchy tag lines to make selling gasoline look & sound unique.

But this doesn’t really make it unique and forces the business owner to work longer and harder, and spend more money.

We should want our product or service to be unique so we can grow.

Is your product closer to being a commodity or closer to being unique?