Competitive Advantage Approaches (Inside Out and Outside in) Essay

A Broad Cost Leader strategy maintains a presence in all segments of the market. The company will gain a competitive advantage by keeping R&D, production and material costs to a minimum, enabling the company to compete on the basis of price, which will be below average. Automation levels will be increased to improve margins and to offset second shift/overtime costs.

The three main competitive strategies are cost leadership, differentiation, and price strategy. Cost leadership focuses on acquiring raw material of the highest quality at the lowest price. In return this company can lower production cost with the goal of being the company with the lowest production cost in the industry. Differentiation strategies allow companies to make their products stand out from the others. Differentiation can be actual or perceived. Actual differentiation occurs when the company creates products that are not available elsewhere. Perceived differentiation takes a lot of marketing and advertisement to convince the consumer that this company’s product is superior. Price strategy includes a variety of strategies that cause a particular product to be marketed at the lowest price possible. Price strategy includes skimming where companies set a high initial price only to turn around and lower it. Bundle pricing occurs when several products are offered for one price. Promotional pricing allows other incentives to buy such as buy one get one half off. Using the pricing strategies causes many consumers to actually purchase more believing that they are receiving a “deal” while the company is still profiting. Competitive strategies are always used by companies and are often used together. Companies that understand how to combine competitive strategies fare much

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

Kudler needs to develop a strategy for the company to keep it sustain profitability. The strategy will establish a profitable position against the five forces listed within Porter’s model. This strategy is important to Kudler to perform activities and services differently from their competitors. This strategy should set Kudler apart from the competition. The Porter’s model suggests the following response strategies to competitive forces: cost leadership, differentiation, focus strategy, growth strategy, alliances strategy, and customer-oriented strategy (Turban, Rainer, & Potter, 2003).

The basis of a firms ability to successfully execute any strategy lie in it’s resources and capabilities.The greatest plan in the world means nothing without the means to carry it out. Resources, defined in the text Modern Competitive Strategy are: “relatively observable, tradable asset[s] that contributes to a firm’s market position by improving customer value, lowering cost, or both.”

The two generic business strategies are differentiation and cost-leadership strategies, and they are fundamentally different from one another, both with their own drawbacks and risks (Rothaermel, 2013). These strategies are referred to as “generic” because they may be used by any type of organization (Rothaermel, 2013). The drawbacks and risks of a differentiation generic strategy is its viability “is severely undermined when the focus of competition shifts to price rather than value-creating

Porter, Michael. 1998. “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.” 26 Dec, 2011. Free Press, 1998.

In 1985 Michael Porter surmised that a market can be subjected into different strategies, thus, three variations of competitive advantage were born. The differentiation strategy is the focus for the purpose of this paper. Furthermore, the differentiation strategy in its most exposed form is a strategy that places prominence toward the brand name and advantage is the prestige that follows. This type of angle draws in a specific high-end consumers which in turn sets its corner of the market apart from its competition. Additionally, in this advantage there is a uniqueness perceived by the consumer, industry wide. The differentiation strategy is distinct in attributes indescribable by price but all the same customers are more than willing to pay a premium for the product or service. Firms that are successful in this advantage are fully equipped with a product development team high in creativity and innovation. Additionally, this strategy is only able to be an advantage if a firm is able to access an unlimited amount of research.

Competitive strategy, after Porter, came to be defined as the strategy of a business unit which seeks to achieve sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA). The literature on strategy deems the market-based view (MBV) and the resource –based view (RBV) as two approaches to giving businesses the competitive edge they need to compete in their industries. Aside from having competitive advantage as their ultimate goal, the two approaches are also similar in the sense that they both make use of particular tools and models in their undertakings. They also differ in numerous ways,

There are two schools of thought pertaining to how firms should choose the competitive strategy that best suits them. One is of the opinion that firms should choose one of the generic strategies and commit all resources to making it work. Porter belongs to this category. They believe that the value chain necessary for cost leadership is quite different from that of differentiation strategy and that while differentiation deals with better quality, cost leadership deals with lowering costs wherever possible.(DESS and DAVIES 1984) What porter articulated here is that there is need for strategic clarity.

This strategy emphasizes the use of an organization’s resources and capabilities to achieve a core competence that cannot be imitated by competitors. Furthermore, the resource based school argues that if an organization distinctively improves its internal capability; that is being able to have effective inside machinery to deliver products and services to customers, the organization will enjoy a massive advantage in the market. This school also argues that in order to have a competitive advantage, an organization must have resource and capabilities that are sophisticated to those of competitors (QuickMBA,

I. Introduction 1. There are several basic approaches to competing successfully and gaining a competitive advantage, but they all involve giving buyers what they perceive as superior value compared to the offerings of rival sellers. 2. This chapter describes the five basic competitive strategy option for building competitive advantage and delivering superior value to customers – which of the five to

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).

Cost leadership emphasizes producing standardized products at a very low per unit cost for consumers who are price sensitive. Differentiation is a strategy aimed at producing products and services considered unique industry wide and directed at customers who are relatively price insensitive. Focus means producing products and services that fulfill the needs of small groups of customers (niche market).

Competitive advantages are conditions that permit an organization or nation to deliver a decent or administration at a lower cost or in a more alluring manner for clients. These conditions permit the gainful element to produce a bigger number of offers or unrivaled edges than its opposition. Competitive advantages are ascribed to an assortment of components, including cost structure, mark, nature of item offerings, dispersion and system, licensed innovation and customer support. Samsung had settled on the choice to receive design as a wellspring of competitive advantage in the 1990s. Prior, the company 's items had been unsatisfying and undifferentiated. In the mid1990s, the Group administrator, Kun-Hee Lee, started Samsung 's change from a low-end OEM into a world-class gadgets organization. Honing the company 's design aptitudes was a critical part of the activity. Be that as it may, this required significant changes in culture, procedures, and frameworks inside the organization. Samsung understood that competitive advantage can be accomplished through the design innovation. Samsung 's voyage toward design greatness began in 1993. That year, Lee supposedly went by a gadgets store in Los Angeles, USA. He saw, sadly, that the Samsung items in plain view looked ugly, while the results of Sony and some different organizations looked a great deal all the more engaging. He discovered too that the business staff at the store were themselves overlooking the Samsung