What factors typically lead to price-based competition in the product life cycle?

One problem as a market enters maturity is that,production forecasters often miss the "inflection point" and regularly build capacity as if markets will continue to grow,if not forever,at least beyond the point that growth actually slows.This inevitably causes "pain" in the form of excess capacity.If competitors' excess capacity cannot be converted to other uses,those competitors will try to stimulate demand to maintain production,and they tend to do so by lowering prices.Thus,competitors who would not otherwise resort to price competition end up "wrecking the market" in order to utilize their capacity.Another factor that tends to drive a shift toward price-based competition across the product life cycle is the fact that the attributes of a product that began as new-to-the-world and capable of differentiating one offering from another,eventually become expected by customers.When the core benefits have been "commoditized" in this way,other benefits,augmentations,and improvements begin to replace the core benefits as drivers of consumer choice.Additionally,and almost inescapably,price emerges as an important consumer choice variable and can become the dominant basis of competition.