WHEREFORE MARKET SHARE

Bigger is better, right? The company with the most customers wins, right? Wrong and wrong, says former Wall Street Journal editor Richard Miniter. His new book, The Myth of Market Share: Why Market Share is the Fool’s Gold of Business (Crown Publishing Group) exposes the fallacy of grabbing the largest share of a business. “Companies have been managing profits for years, all to get a smooth upward growth curve,” he says. “What really drives stock price up — or what should — is profits.”

Miniter says there’s hope for change. He cites companies like ExxonMobil — which now manages each service station for profits instead of building a station each time a competitor does — as the beginnings of a shift in the way CEOs, analysts, and investors measure a company’s value.