Thus differentiation provides a firm with something of a "mini" or weak
monopoly. However, as a final note, we reject (in line with Hunt and
Morgan (1995)) the pejorative connotations of the term "monopoly".
Differentiation is not a sign of sub-optimal markets, nor of socially
undesirable firm strategy, but is a natural reaction to heterogeneous market
756 Byron Sharp and John Dawes
demands and heterogeneous firm resources. A lack of differentiation could
mean less customer utility and sub-optimal utilisation of firm (society's)
resources. But this seldom if ever happens, instead differentiation is a
pervasive and almost unavoidable aspect of real competitive markets.