This is kind of tangential to the actual question asked in the OP, but it seems to me that there are two ways for a company to try to make money: Market control and value creation.
There are lots of ways that a business can gain more market control. They can loss-lead to try to lock customers into supply payments. They can lobby regulators to block new entrants. They can make deals with middlemen to marginalize the distribution of competition. Once you have a powerful share of market control, it becomes really easy to earn profits because competitors don't have your mindshare, your distribution presence, or your economies of scale.
For example, I'd be perfectly happy to buy generic cola for half the price of a Coke. But when I get thirsty for cola at work, generic isn't an option. It's not an option at the 7/11 or any fast food restaurant, either. Coke and Pepsi have all the distribution, so I have to buy either a Coke or a Pepsi. There's no magic sauce in brand-name cola that makes it worth twice the price of generic, they just have distribution contracts that keep the generic competition trapped in grocery stores.
Value creation is the simple focus on creating a better product. There's all kinds of ways of doing that. It can be tougher, cheaper, more stylish, faster, easier, or just a compelling new combination of ideas. You give consumers a good reason to want your product, and charge them a premium because they want it more than the other guy's product.
Honda is a good example here. They make notoriously reliable cars. Customers buy them at a premium because they expect to either get a lot of milage without a lot of maintenance, or because they know they'll get a great price for them when they sell them on the used market later on.
Both paths can lead to profit or ruin for a business depending on how well the strategy is executed. A company that wins with control can have that control slip from its grasp into the hands of one that creates more value, while a company that pursues value creation can find itself crushed by one that leverages better control over the market. But as a consumer, I'll tell you that I almost always take the value creator over the controller.
Sorry for the tl;dr. 
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