Nice piece about how hypercompetition's hit diminishing returns in consumer satisfaction:
"...Companies are offering the best bargains in history. It has never been cheaper to fly from Dallas to Los Angeles, to make a phone call from Boston to Brussels or to buy a computer or a DVD player. Yet the harder companies work to make products cheaper and better, the less they seem to impress their customers."
That's because consumers want more than simply low prices: they want to find meaning in the goods they buy.