Strategic Management Important Questions

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.

2.Competitive Advantage – It includes the best product of an Organization in the competitive market.

Distinguishing one 's firm from the alternatives is a major concern for any business. Strategic analysis provides the starting point in the strategic management process organizations use to evaluate and choose the competitive advantages that distinguish them from other organizations within the market. Dominating businesses should also "choose among alternative grand strategies to guide the firm 's activities, particularly when they are trying to decide about broadening the scope of the firm 's activities beyond its core business (Robinson & Pearce, 2009)."

Firms pursuing a specialization strategy often try to develop a competitive advantage based on customer intimacy and try to deliver unique and customizable products or services to meet their customer’s needs and increase their

To better understand a firm and its placement of its strategies, we must conduct an analysis of factors that might affect its selection of strategies.

Business level strategy refers to the integrated set of actions a firm uses to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting core competencies in specific product markets. HP is trying to gain competitive advantage through differentiation by becoming a smaller more agile force in the industry that will bring more modernized systems such as cloud and digital systems vice using antiquated IT infrastructures. The HP Enterprise will differentiate from its competitors by providing services within four component areas; transform, protect, empower, and enable which are indicative of the way the market is headed and meets the customer need. An example of an HP intended and realized business strategy is acquiring Eucalyptus, a provider of open source software for building private and hybrid enterprise clouds. This acquisition is a realized result of a three year planned strategy. (HP,

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

Corporate-level strategies are liable for market definition; they address the entire scope of the business. This strategy helps a business to diversify its service. It gives them direction in which geographic region they should operate and which service markets to strive in. “Thus, an effective corporate-level strategy creates, across all of a firm’s businesses, aggregate returns that exceed what those

Another strategy is Being defensive ; Defensive strategies are relatively close to Differentiation & Cost leadership . This method helps in keeping all the advantages in one place once they are attained . This strategy is considered as an actual one as it limit competitors ability to offer a business opposition .

Competitive advantage(CA) is an advantage competitors gain by providing or offering customers or consumers greater value for their money through product and service differentiation or through lower prices. Maintaining competitive advantage is crucial to many businesses or organizations' success in order to survive in the market. Competitive advantage is characterized by superior performance which could be an attribute to outperform the competitors whether current or potential; or gaining a higher market share in a particular industry thereby ensuring market leadership; or ultimately, maximization of profit.(JOBBER 2010)

Fulfilling the client/customer’s requirement Dell perform primary and support activities that produces cost effective and differentiated features. The company provide

Competitive strategy is the moves and methods that the firm has taken and is taking to appeal buyers, improve its market position, and to endure competitive pressures. The strategy is about what a firm’s capability to try to knock off competitors and attain competitive advantage, which can be offensive or defensive. There are three approaches to competitive strategy, which are low-cost leadership strategy where struggling to be the overall low-cost manufacturer in the in industry. Moreover, pursuing to distinguish one’s product offering from competitors (differentiation strategy), and the last one is focus or niche strategy where aiming on thin portion of the market rather than the whole market (Porter, 1998).

There are five generic business strategies that companies choose from when trying to successfully compete within their respective industries. This is the first choice a company must make, even before deciding an overall strategy. These generic business strategies include low-cost provider strategy, broad differentiation strategy, best-cost provider strategy; focused strategy based on low costs, and focused strategy based on differentiation. These strategies have many advantages as well as disadvantages. Choosing which one to use depends on what market position a company wants to pursue. Deciding to be more offensive or defensive also plays a role in choosing a

Chapter Five describes the five basic competitive strategy options – which of the five to employ is a company’s first and foremost choice in crafting overall strategy and beginning its quest for competitive advantage.

“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).