Popular products, technologies, etc. They dominate the market. Similar to popular committee standards (e.g., A4 paper format ISO 216 or Wifi IEEE 802.11g), de facto standards function as points of reference for consumers and producers; but, unlike committee standards, they were not created for that purpose.
Published in Chapter:
Predatory Strategies in Standards Wars: On Creating Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
Tineke Mirjam Egyedi (DIRoS, The Netherlands) and Anique Hommels (Maastricht University, The Netherlands)
Copyright: © 2019
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-9008-8.ch013
Abstract
In standards wars, FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is sometimes created to weaken an opponent's market position. Little is known about these strategies, their use in committee standardization settings, and how to respond to them. This chapter explores this phenomenon. It (1) identifies various FUD strategies, (2) their context of emergence, and (3) their effect on the dynamics of a standards war in a historical case study: the European standards war on digital mobile radio communication in the 1990s. The study highlights the need to distinguish “FUD as perceived” from “FUD as intended.” FUD strategies and case-specific characteristics of their emergence are illustrated. The chapter shows that perceived FUD polarizes and entrenches positions of warring parties thereby affecting the course of the standards war. The authors conclude that, given its impact, reflection by corporate standardization managers on (perceived) FUD, preclusion, counter-strategies, and the downscaling of standards wars is warranted.