Success Quote by Alfred P. Sloan

Competition, in Sloan's telling, is not a motivational poster but a gravity well. The line is steeped in the industrial realism of early-to-mid 20th century American manufacturing, when General Motors (and Sloan as its architect) learned that scale and managerial sophistication still bow to the market's bluntest instrument: price. His phrasing strips away the comforting fiction that executives "set" prices through sheer will or branding; they negotiate with rivals, consumers, and cost structures that don't care about internal spreadsheets.

The specific intent is managerial: a warning to leaders and investors that the market will discipline even the best-run firm. "Final price determinant" reads like a courtroom verdict, not a suggestion. Sloan isn't moralizing about greed or fairness; he's laying down the operating conditions of capitalism as he practiced it: profits are contingent, returns are a compromise, and losses are sometimes a strategic toll.

The subtext is sharper than it looks. By calling losses "temporary", Sloan normalizes sacrifice as a rational tactic rather than a failure. That framing is also power: it legitimizes price wars, cyclical pain, and the expectation that labor, suppliers, and even shareholders must absorb volatility in service of long-run position. It's a CEO's version of stoicism, but with balance sheets.

Contextually, Sloan helped build modern corporate planning, product segmentation, and decentralized management at GM. This quote complements that system: all the internal organization in the world still ends at the boundary where competitors and customers make the rules.