Chapter 6 Strengthening a company s competitive position strategic moves timing and scope of operations

When a certain point is reached regarding a company’s success, a set of different opportunities arise and partnerships may unfold. However, with every possible strategy available, risks and benefits also come into play; without discarding any of them beforehand, every option is a strong candidate until a final decision is made. In this case study we will analyze the current business strategy pertaining

Due to the growing competition and diminishing market share, companies are opting for different strategies to achieve their survival objectives as well as growth. Companies are thus executing grand strategies to provide their businesses with a clear direction for its strategic actions. These strategies, therefore, aim at both short term and long term sustainability and growth, and they include innovation, market development, product development, and concentration.

There are many strategies that organizations can incorporate in today’s business environment. An organization can decide to take on a low-cost provider strategy, a focused low-cost strategy, broad differentiation strategy, focused differentiation strategy, and/or a best-cost provider strategy. While all of them have their own unique features and can offer a competitive advantage over its rivals, Competitive Shoes, Inc. decided to incorporate the best-cost strategy into its organization in order to compete against it rivals. By incorporating the best-cost strategy into its organization, Competitive Shoes Inc. felt that they could stay

Each organization has or should have a distinct business strategy to ensure they reach their desired goals and objectives. Uniquely, the business strategy, or competitive strategy, should include their target consumers, the product or service desired by their consumers, and their roadmap to remain competitive in the market (Parnell, 2014). However, strategies may be difficult to determine when the organization is engrossed in one industry, but decides to dip their toe in another industry (Bethel, 2016).

In today’s highly competitive market, the continuous changes that are occurring in the social, politic and economic environment create serious challenges in the corporate world. Corporations cannot afford to do business as usual if they want to remain in the game and be successful. In order to achieve their goals and objectives, they need to evolve, adapt, learn and apply different new strategies that will help them secure long-run success and performance. Among those strategies, we are going to discuss ten of them and their advantages in connection with corporation’s goals and objectives.

These advantages are usually temporary because a competitor, which in turn creates a perpetual cycle of improvement strategies (Baltzan & Phillips, 2007), often duplicates them. Techniques to consider, would be environmental scanning, first-movers advantage, and Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model (Baltzan & Phillips, 2007).

Miles and Snow have produced a typology of business level strategies. Their typology involves four strategic types: defenders, prospectors, analyzers and reactors. Using Miles and Snow’s strategy typology that consist of; defender, analyzer, reactor, and prospector, I will categorize Dollar Tree in its strategy typology. In the first strategy defenders try to carve a niche in the market where stability can be found. As in the prospector strategy, companies are constantly producing innovations. I understand through Miles and Snow typology of business level strategies that defenders, analyzers, and prospectors are forms of organizations. Therefore, if an alignment is reached between a chosen strategy, and organizational structure mentioned above Dollar Tree has the potential to be a

Strategy is important for any business, as the combination of goals, perspectives, beliefs, and actions that comprise a company's strategy have a direct impact on that company's success, profitability, and impact on the industry, environment, and community in which the company operates (Thompson et al, 2011). Without a proper strategy in place any business is ultimately doomed to failure, as improper strategies or a complete lack of focused strategy leaves a company vulnerable to innumerable risks arising both internally and externally, without an effective means of taking advantage of opportunities or ensuring operational efficiency and effectiveness (Thompson et al, 2011). Smaller businesses and single-business companies, while simpler to operate in some ways, can be even more dependent on successful and well-adjusted strategies, as they are more susceptible to shocks and sudden changes in their chosen industry of operation (Butler, 2001; Longenecker et al, 2005).

Strategy formulation has been acknowledged as one of the most crucial factors of ensuring the long-term growth of the business. However, the manner in which strategy is formulated, and most importantly, the nature of the strategy chosen for the company determines its future position in the marketplace (Grant, 2005).

The more prospective the competitive advantage the more it becomes hard for it's advantage to be neutralized .

This strategy seem challenging since this strategy focus on capture new market and new demand, which it’s required extra efforts in term of innovation of products and promotion in order to make customers realize about their product. Even there are some discussions about the blue ocean strategies; however, based on my review on customers comment said that the practical guidance on how to create them is limited. Therefore, without usual analytic framework which can be used as guidelines to create blue oceans as well as effective principles to manage risk, creating blue oceans viewed as too risky for managers to pursue as strategy for their company.

Strategic decisions are often based on by the company can use its existing competitive advantages in the process of promoting the value and capital growth (Lynch, 2009). However, sustained competitive advantage on how to perform these operations largely depends on the company. (Porter, 2008) The need for business development and expansion has been known to promote the product and marketing innovation, which in turn prompted them to take the basis of the different organisational strategic, it’s based on products and target markets (Ansoff, 1984).

“Competitive strategy involves positioning a business to maximize the value of the capabilities that distinguish it from its competitor’s” (Porter 1980:47). A successful business plan requires first and foremost the formation of an appropriate strategy. Through the implementation of a suitable strategy, the company is able to obtain its own industry niche and gain an understanding of its customers (Porter 1985). Whichever strategy is adopted it must be adequately integrated within the firms goals and missions to achieve a competitive advantage (Parker and Helms 1992).

An organisation bases its strategy according to its environment, and if implemented right will be successful. Firms can target their products by a broad target, thereby covering most of the marketplace, or they can focus on a narrow target in the market (Lynch, 2003). Michael Porter created a generic strategies framework in order for an organisation to gain a competitive advantage in their industry. Porter considers three generic strategies in his framework that an organisation can undertake to gain this advantage. He believes that an organisation falls into either cost leadership (lower cost) or differentiation and once applied in a broad or narrow scope, as discussed by Lynch, creates focus (Figure 1). Furthermore, some organisations undertake in more that one of these strategies and if unsuccessful is called the stuck-in-the-middle strategy. However, if the organisation combines elements of differentiation and elements of low-cost successfully, this becomes and hybrid option and is becoming increasingly popular amongst firms in the modern day.

| ST Strategies: * Make innovations for being over the potential competitors. * Use their financial position for acquire new technology.