company can offer lower quality, worse-performing products for a certain class of customers who have lower performance or quality requirements than the average consumer, but do it at a much lower price (less for much less) Finally, a company can offer better performing product for a lower price than before (more for less), which is ambitious and hard to achieve, as offering more quality usually requires an increase in production cost. Conversely, a customer's value proposition is the perceived subjective value, satisfaction or usefulness of a product or service (based on its differentiating features and its personal and social values for the customer) delivered to and experienced by the customer when they acquire it. It is the net positive subjective difference between the total benefits they obtain from it and the sum of monetary cost and non-monetary sacrifices (relative benefits offered by other alternative competitive products) which they have to give up in return. However, often there is a discrepancy between what the company thinks about its value proposition and what the clients think it is. A company's value propositions can evolve, whereby values can add up over time. For example, Apple's value proposition contains a mix of three values. Originally, in the 1980s, it communicated that its products are creative, elegant and "cool" and thus different from the status quo ("Think different"). Then in the first two decades of the 21st century, it communicated its second value of providing the customers with a reliable, smooth, hassle-free user experience within its ecosystem ("Tech that works"). In the 2020s, Apple's latest differentiating value is the protection of its client's privacy ("Your data is safe with us"). Overview A value proposition is a statement which identifies clear, measurable and demonstrable benefits consumers get when buying a particular product or service. It should convince consumers that this product or service is better than others on the market. This proposition can lead to a competitive advantage when consumers pick that particular product or service over other competitors because they perceive greater value. The phrase "value proposition" (VP) is credited to Michael Lanning and Edward Michaels, who first used the term in a 1988 staff paper for the consulting firm McKinsey and co. In the paper, which was titled "a business is a value delivery system", the authors define value proposition as "a clear, simple statement of the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that the