One major avenue for achieving a cost advantage over rivals is by minimizing R&D expenses, paying below-average wages and salaries to conserve on labor costs, streamlining operations, and employing a value chain that has more cost drivers than any other firm in the industry. doing a better job than rivals of performing value chain activities more cost-effectively. moving the performance of most all value chain activities to low-wage countries and aggressively pursuing efforts to boost sales volumes (in order to such costs as R\&D, advertising, and selling and administrative costs out over more units). concentrating exclusively on the primary activities portion of the value chain and outsourcing all support activities. producing a standardized product, redesigning the product infrequently, and spending minimally on advertising