Opportunities to differentiate a company's product offering can exist in activities all along an industry's value chain and usually entail deliberate efforts to perform value chain activities in ways that create value-adding differentiating attributes for customers. are most frequently related to a company's R&D expertise, manufacturing capabilities, and/or customer service activities. are typically located in the sales and marketing portion of the value chain. are usually tied to product quality and customer service. are most reliably found in either the product R&D or supply chain portions of its value chain.