Compliance and Choice Paradox

According to Porter, strategy is about trade-offs and choices. Select an example of your choice and elaborate on this statement. Do you agree or disagree? Use your example to support your position.

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).

While our competitors adopted cost leadership and differentiation strategies, we remained the same in our positioning strategies. We remained defenders of our practices and our competitive prospectors overtook us in the market. On a firm level, strong market commonality and resource similarity put us in a place for direct competition that we distinctively overlooked.

This analysis is conducted on the Porters Five Forces theory that is crucial for effective strategic decision-making, the five forces that shape industry competition are:

Businesses continually adapt to a changing environment to maintain their market position (Appelbaum, Habashy, Malo, & Shafiq, 2012; Biedenbacha & Soumlderholma, 2008). Change is inevitable considering the current rate of technological advancement and the growth in global competition (Appelbaum et al., 2012; Armenakis & Harris, 2009; By, 2007). Increasing competition and the need for strategic flexibility and globalization is affecting almost every organization today, regardless of size, market, focus, and so on (Jaros, 2010).

A competitive strategy, or business-level strategy, is the way a business used to successfully enter and penetrate into a market (Eastwood et al, 2006), and also, to succeed in this chosen market against its competitors (Johnson et al, 2014). A company needs to develop and apply appropriate strategy to help the company to generate distinctive competences (David, 2007). Compared with the strategies implemented in other levels of operation, competitive strategy is more focused on the competition against other competitors and strategic choices to better attain market share (Harrison and St. John, 2009). According to

In other words, customers are willing to purchase low-tech products as long as their prices are relatively low. As a result, Niche Cost Leadership seems to be the most appropriate strategy for these two segments.

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.

Porter (1980) created a model which considers five important forces (Porters five forces) which aims to establish a profitable and sustainable position against the forces that determine industry competition, therefore position themselves within it and differentiating themselves where necessary in order to strategically gain a competitive advantage - this model gives vision of: Threat of new entrants, Threat of substitute products or services, Bargaining power of customers , Bargaining power of suppliers and Intensity of competitive rivalry (Porter 1980). Using models and academic theory like this allows strategy to be formed through a rational and an analytical process. Chandlers (1962) cited in (Lomash 2003) suggests the analytical process is about the determination of long-term clear goals, adopting actions to achieve these goals and then building the resources within the organization around this strategy in order to ensure it succeeds. Johnson (2005), likewise, simply suggested a three step approach to strategy - analysis, choice and implementation which goes hand-in-hand with intended strategy.

The organizations that endeavour to wind up the least cost makers in an industry can be alluded to as those taking after a low cost procedure. The organization with the least expenses would gain the most elevated benefits in the occasion when the contending items are basically undifferentiated, and offering at a standard business market cost. Organizations taking after this methodology place accentuation on cost diminishment in each action in the value chain. Note that an organization may be a cost pioneer however that does not inexorably infer that the organization 's items would have a low cost. In specific occurrences, the organization can for occasion charge a normal cost while applying the low cost leadership strategy and put the earnings made back into the business

Differentiation can be achieved in a variety of ways: unusual features, responsive customer service, rapid product innovations, technological leadership, perceived prestige and status, appeal to different tastes, and engineering design and performance. Methods of controlling costs, however, may be limited. The ability to price differentiated products competitively will be important for reducing upward pressure on customer prices so that they do not exceed the level customers are willing to

Two examples of why Alphabet Games must consider forces for change when managing its business strategy are : Value leadership (internal) and the competitive environment (external)

There are also some risks for each strategy. Upholding cost leadership can be risky because of the requirement of frequent capital investment to sustain cost advantage, then cost surges narrow price differentials and diminish ability to compete with other’s brand royalty. Differentiation strategy has some threats, such as imitation decreases alleged differentiation, buyers need for differentiation falls. Meanwhile, the risks for focus or niche strategy are the differences in preferred products or services between the strategic market and target as a whole narrows, the cost discrepancy between wide ranged competitors and the focused firms broadens to eradicate the cost advantages of allocating a narrow target or to offset the

The manner in which firms are able to compete is most commonly categorized by implementing Michael Porter’s strategic typologies. Porter’s strategic theory has been the most widely accepted strategic approach used by fellow academics (Kim and Lim 1988; Bordean et al 2010). Porter proposed three generic strategies namely: cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategy. Warszawski (1996) later introduced a competitive strategy

A successful cost leadership strategy usually provides the entire firm with high efficiency, low overhead, limited perks, intolerance of waste, intensive screening of budget requests, and wide span of control efforts. However, some risks of pursuing this strategy are that competitors might imitate the strategy, thus, driving overall industry profits down; that technology breakthroughs in the industry may make the strategy ineffective; or that buyer’s interest may swing to other differentiating features besides price.