The Best Cost Provider Strategy

Apple Valley Family Practice is a medical practice with four locations in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. The clinical staff consists of 20 physicians, all of whom practice in one or more areas of family medicine, and 46 physician extenders and nurses.

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

In the real competition, we will still use the broad differentiation strategy in the first round. We will make our products better than the market with an affordable price. By using this method, we create a brand image and customer loyalty. Over time, brand recognition will lead to greater company profitability. In the second round, we will still improve all of the products’ performance and size, in which it has to be better than the market. For the price, we will keep it same

Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, and Strickland (2012) found that competitive strategy depend on whether a company’s target market is narrow or broad, and whether a company is seeking competitive advantage through low-cost or product differentiation. These two factors reveal five generic competitive strategies. The five strategies are Overall Low-Cost Provider Strategy, Focused Low-Cost Strategy, Broad Differentiation Strategy, Focused Differentiation Strategy, and Best Cost

Differentiation strategy is generally reserved for companies with a clear competitive advantage. Companies such as Mercedes and Apple employ this strategy. Differentiation strategy is demonstrated when a company provides value to customers through unique unique features and characteristics of a company's products rather than by the lowest price (Open Learning World 2010).

There are many strategies discussed by Jobber and Chadwick (2013) to obtain such competitive advantage, either on broad or narrow or broad scope dimensions, or by different competitive base of differentiation or cost.

A specialization strategy focuses on a narrow market segment or niche and pursuing either a differentiation or cost leadership strategy in that market segment according to Jean Phillip and Stanley Gully. To be successful, businesses following a specialization strategy are required to know their market segment very well, and often enjoy a high degree of customer loyalty. The company can be successful using this strategy if it results in either lower costs than competitors serving the same niche or an ability to offer customers something that other competitors cannot.

The strategy I chose for the simulation is “Niche Cost Leader." First, with the key focus being value, this strategy will challenge me to keep costs at a minimum and force me to streamline overall costs to produce a valuable commodity that, in turn, will generate financial success that can be shared with internal and external stakeholders. Second, as the success of this strategy primarily relies on the existing product line being prosperous, I will be able to practice and hone my forecasting skills based on one product. Though I eventually will produce more than one product, most of the simulation will be conducting under making the primary product as successful as it can be, and reliable forecasts are

A company needs to create a series of programs to differentiate their product from those from its competitors and to appropriately price the product to achieve the maximum demand, in order to set up the dynamics of its competitive strategy (David, 2007). The competitive strategy of a company is also expected to offer better products or services to its customers, at a reasonable cost. Due to the mass influence of the external environmental on the customers’ preference, it is vital for the company to develop an available competitive strategy to be able to solve a series of problems, and ultimately to improve the company’s performance. Those problems include: how to differentiate its products or service from competitors, how to create market segments to maximize demands, and how to offer a wider range of products or services to better meet the customers’ needs at more acceptable costs (David, 2007).

In differentiation strategies, the emphasis is on creating value through sustainable uniqueness. This can be achieved through product innovations, superior quality, or superior service, which is then sustained and leveraged through creative advertising; brand-building and strong supply chain relationships. Another requirement for a successful differentiation strategy is that customers must be willing to pay more for the uniqueness of a product or service than the firm paid to create it. A differentiation strategy will lead to higher firm performance only if buyers value the attributes that make a product or service unique enough to pay a higher price for it or if they choose to buy from that firm preferentially. If

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 .

There are numerous definitions of competitive strategy; whether, it was defined by a scholar, a textbook, or a dictionary source, it is not the same. A source may refer to this subject as a competitive strategy or a competitive advantage. Therefore, this subject is difficult to understand and then apply to a company. The Five Generic Competitive Strategies that Michael E. Porter developed are not really five strategies, more like five with subsets under them. Nike does not fit neatly into a specific strategy. The first factor within the competitive strategy as described in the Essentials of Strategic Management textbook is a broad target market or a narrow target market. The second factor considers

Another generic competitive strategy is broad differentiation strategies. According to Thompson, Strickland, and Gamble, in “Crafting and Executing Strategy”, broad differentiation strategy is seeking to differentiate the company’s product offering from rivals in ways that will appear to a brad spectrum of buyers. A company attempting to succeed through differentiation must study buyers’ needs and behavior carefully to learn what buyers consider important, what they think has value, and what they are willing to pay for. Then the company has to incorporate buyer-desired attributes into its product or service offering

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 Advantage is dedicated to the task of pointing the way to specific means of achieving and sustaining an advantageous position while competitive Strategy locates and broadly defines the territory of strategic decision and it is intended as a road map to best traverse the territory”, said Balderston, Frederick E (Balderston, et.al, 1985). In Business Strategy Games, we have decided to choose Global Differentiation strategy to set company footwear apart from other competitors’ brands to gain competitive advantages based on such as cut down the number of model but we provide more style to choose and we provided new model every year, sign up celebrities and we have done inventory to clear the stock every year. Besides that, we used superior material and we went for “Go Green” to Increase Company’s brand and reputation. We believe that by choosing differentiation strategy can bring many advantages to our business such as increase Company profit and