manufacturers, must function and create effective strategies for maximizing market share, capitalizing upon opportunity costs, and outperforming rivals.
Cooperative oligarchy, as practiced by Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler in the U.S. and participated in by the foreign automakers, creates a market climate in which competition revolves around non-price issues. Whitworth (1995) commented that all of the American "Big 3" appeared as of the mid-1980s to have established price ranges that were reasonably congruent. They and their foreign competitors were differentiated in other areas. This differentiation, according to Ford President Jac Nasser, separates automakers from producers of soft consumer goods such as toothpaste, orange juice, and razor blades (Connelly, 1999a). Competition in this industry, though subject to governmental regulation and oversight, is also influenced by the inherent disciplining mechanism of competition itself; when one automaker introduces a standard
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