Introduction And Our Current Business Value Chain

In order for a firm to create competitive advantage, it needs to create a set of activites that can deliver value to the specific product and services it offers to its customers. To start talking about my life as a “value chain”, I may need to compare it to a specific product”. This is going to take precedence both in my personal life and professional life.

The value chain, made by Michael Porter, is really important to see how a company structure is created. The value chain is constituted by two parts: support activities (firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, procurement) and primary activities (inbound logistic, operations, outbound logistic, marketing and sales, service). (Johnson et al. 2011, p.97-99)

Value chain is a set of activities a company performs in order to provide a valuable solution to their customer problem in their market space or industry. The value chain is made up of primary and support activities. Primary activities being research and development, production, marketing and sales and customer service. These are the primary steps that are required to get a product or service to market to solve the customer problems. Some of the secondary steps include company

Value chain analysis (VCA) attempts to understand how a business creates customer value by examining the contributions of different activities within the business to that value.” (Pearce & Robinson, 2004) To Southern Style, this statement means that customer satisfaction should be a number one goal for the restaurant. Repeat customers are a good way to get word out about how good the food is and wonderful the service is at the restaurant. Word of mouth travels faster than any advertisement that has ever been invented.

One of Porter’s main contributions was Porter’s value chain. The value chain is all the activities an organization undertakes to create value for a customer. According to Porter, there are two ways to gain an edge over competitors. A firm must provide comparable but value but perform the activities on the chain at a lower cost, or; Perform services in a unique way

Steve Denning (2011), states that customer delight is the firm’s new bottom line and delighting the customer from outsets to outcomes. By focusing on delighting the customer the firm makes a lot more money than they would if they set out to make money. Delighting the customers make a lot of money. Customer delight = providing a continuous stream of additional value to customers and delivering it sooner. It is measurable and means a different way of running the company.

The value chain is one of the critical elements of a company’s strategy in today’s competitive world, because company’s profit depends on how the successful and efficient it runs its operations and how the end product appeals to the customers at a price that covers all the expenses of the company.

A value chain is an essential model for businesses that are trying to gain a competitive edge over their respective counterparts. “The purpose of the value chain is to sequentially link interdependent operational activities that create a value that exceeds the cost of producing or providing a product or service; thus creating a profit margin” (Porter, 1998). In order to measure and further develop the implemented value procedure, a value analysis should be conducted on the chain or system in place; solidifying it’s viability and potential profit growth. This methodology is not only recommended for profit-based businesses, but the same principle can be applied to a non-profit company.

Value Chain analysis evaluates each step business goes through from inception to finality. The goal is to maximize the value for the total cost. Costco's mission is to provide their members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices. The company’s mission, values and strategies suggest Costco uses a broad enterprise strategy which fits in the societal framework. To ensure employee motivation, Costco offers them a unique banquet of benefits. This include; paying health benefits for them, 50% higher wage, employee retention of over 90 percent, and maintaining employees even during recession periods (Costco, 2010). The Company’s strength is its primary value chains which split into two distinct functions: Demand fulfilment and Demand generation. Demand fulfilment includes input logistics, operations, and output logistics. Demand generation involves sales, marketing, and service department which breaks down into sub-tiers. Costco’s support activities include HRM, technology development, firm infrastructure and procurement. Costco’s weaknesses are difficult to pinpoint; one weakness is persistent low operating profit margins. Bigger profits can occur by not paying employee benefits and with demanding higher returns from their suppliers. The problem would be at what cost?  Costco receives cost advantages from value adding major (brand items) activities. However, it continues to experience a challenge

The basic principle in defining the value chain, according to Michael Porter (Porter, 1985), is that the activities include a variety of disaggregations from the below three perspectives. First, they have different economics, implying that these activities are functioning in different segments of the market. Second, even though the economics differentiation is not that evident, isolated activities should have a potential impact for it. Third, value-adding activities have significant input scale.

The function of the value chain is to contribute with cost- efficient activities and simplify the purchase process (Coughlan et al., 2006). But if the chain consists of many actors the ones far back could have limited or no contact with customers resulting in lost of valuable information (REF).

Kiichiro Toyoda was the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation and the automotive-centered Toyota Group. Kiichiro was a keen, skillful inventor and the continuous resolve of invention helped him to create the business base acquired from his father, Sakichi Toyoda. With the incessant drive towards innovation and invention, Kiichiro extended into the automotive business and build the groundwork of Toyota Group that you see today.

A value chain is a chain of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product or service for the market. The concept comes from business management and was first described and popularized by Michael Porter (Porter, 2013)

Value chain is an approach to know how an item or activities create value for consumers. The most of value provides to consumers, the most of competitive advantage an organization build. In this analysis, value chain model has separated into primary and support activities. Primary activities are included in the physical creation of the item and service. On the other hand, support activities give the inputs and infrastructure that enable the primary activities to happen. This value chain model can be refer to below figure 5.

Diageo’s code for business value creation does involve their tangible assets, however other organizations can easily buy them, so these are rarely the source of competitive advantage. The greatest tangible source that is not easily obtainable by other companies is their own resource to produce raw and unique materials to their own products. Diageo has competitors purchase materials from their owned and operated distilleries and land to make their own product. Intangible assets are difficult to measure and can’t be touched or seen. These assets drive innovation and contribute to Diageo’s success and competitive edge in the market place. Above, examining Diageo’s unique mix of resources explores how Diageo develops certain resources necessary to support corporate strategy. As we have reviewed, Diageo has a purpose, vision, mission and objective, and has strategically implemented internal assets and has the capability and resources to deliver their strategy.