The Competitive Advantages Zappos

If a firm’s resources are both valuable and rare, a firm may achieve a competitive advantage (Newbert, 2008). A resource is considered valuable when it improves the efficiency and effectiveness of a strategy, and when it exploits external opportunities or neutralises external threats (Barney, 1991). This wording is somewhat confusing as it draws a direct connection with the environmental model, i.e. Porter’s (1985) five forces. The ‘value’ variable could therefore be rendered exogenous to the RBV (Priem and Butler, 2001). On the other hand, Peteraf (1993) praises the model for its internal focus and ability to uncover potential sources of competitive advantage which cannot be attributed to the external environment, notably because areas of value are often so difficult to identify (Newbert, 2008). The term ‘potential’ is used because not all resources have the ability to create a SCA

The VRIO Frameworks permits to see which tangible and intangible resources give Amazon its superior performance. The company has a competitive advantage over its rivals as Amazon focuses on its customers. Amazon offers a wide array of selection of goods at various prices to its millions of customers. Amazon has been able to keep this competitive advantage by leveraging its resources. For the resources to attribute to competitive advantage they must pass the VRIO framework. The VRIO framework states that a resource must be valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organized to captured value. Each of Amazon’s tangible and intangible resources are evaluated to see which meet the above criteria.

Selecting a business strategy that details valuable resources and distinctive competencies, strategizing all resources and capabilities and ensuring they are all employed and exploited, and building and regenerating valuable resources and distinctive competencies is key. The analysis of resources, capabilities and core competencies describes the external environment which is subject to change quickly. Based off this information a firm has to be prepared and know its internal resources and capabilities and offer a more secure strategy. Furthermore, resources and capabilities are the primary source of profitability. Resources entail intangible, tangible, and human resources.

Amazon focuses on global reach, putting customer first,, and extensive selection of products through its vision which is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Gregory 2016).

In this strategic management assignment, we will see how organization achieve and sustain competitive advantage. As the global leader of the international express and logistics industry, we will study how DHL has gained and achieved in sustaining its position in the logistics sector. To do so, the report will be cut in two parts. Firstly, an introduction will present, explain the subject and then expose

The threat of new entrants into the online shoe/apparel market is relatively small due to the fact that Zappos is such an established brand and has specialized their business model. It would be far too expensive for a new company to copy the characteristics of Zappos including their next day delivery and large overhead. The fact that Zappos was losing money initially illustrates this difficulty. Another issue that would create a high barrier to entry is Zappos commitment to the consumer through overnight shipping. Zappos stated that the overnight shipping caused them to leave their warehouses open for the entire day. Any other company would

For a business to be successful and have a competitive advantage, it is important to evaluate the company’s resources and capabilities (Pitt & Koufopoulos, 2012). Resources in a company are the productive assets owned (tangible or intangible) whereas capabilities are what the company can do with this (Grant, 2010). “Establishing competitive

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,

The case study is upon on the resource based view. First, the firm resources were divided into three major parts: tangible resource, intangible resource and human resource as Grant suggested. The main body of the essay will also be divided into three parts according to the resource classification. Then, a VRIN test would be carried after listing different types of resources to inspect whether they are able to provide a sustainable competitive advantage for Zara. Finally, Zara’s dynamic capabilities will be discussed to state how Zara used the resources based on their organizational culture.

“Competitive advantage refers to what sets the organisation apart from others and provides it with a distinctive edge for meeting customers or client needs in the marketplace.” (Daft and Marcic, 2011, p.152) I will use a SWOT analysis to identify Tesco’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats so it will be clear what Tesco need to improve so they can go on to making decisions to compete with their competitors and threats.

The five generic competitive strategies are low-cost provider, broad differentiation, focused low-cost, focused differentiation strategy, and best-cost provider strategy. According to the textbook, “a company’s competitive strategy deals exclusively with the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully” (Gamble, 93).

Through an internal environment analysis, companies can identify and understand their own unique resources, capabilities, and competencies that are required for their sustainable competitive advantage. Resources, capabilities, and core competencies are the foundation of competitive advantage. There is no competitive advantages are permanently sustainable in any companies, so they have to consist on their current advantages and develop new advantages by internally understanding and analyzing their resources and capabilities. Competitors have their own unique resources, capabilities, and core competencies to create values for their customers. Both tangible and intangible resources, which include individual, social and organizational phenomena, are combined to generate capabilities. In turn, company’s capabilities are used to build core competencies. Also, core competencies are as a source of competitive advantage for a company to win in the competitive market.

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,

Zappos, as the first and the world’s largest online shoes retailer, has developed a high quality experience and delivered “wow” to customers. It has established a strong relationship with customer and stick to bring the store to the customer’s home. It has used less twenty yeas to become a profitable company holding an outstanding reputation for customer service and its employee are passionately engage in their works. In this paper, I aimed to analyze the relationship between strategic capabilities and performance in Zappos’s success. The business environment is not constant rather than changeable, so how Zappos goes ahead of revival and forms its unique competency advantages. I will utilize VRIO test to detect the company’s level of competitive advantage. In addition, I will continually combine Barney’ theory of resource based view(RBV) with Zappos to identified which resources it processes and how Zappos used those to form its core competency.

This report was commissioned to examine how ASOS has greatly uses their strategic business plan and integrated with the E-commerce to create sales miracle in the fashion industry. E-commerce has brought an enormous impact to the traditional business activities, it highlights the sign is to increase trade opportunities, reduce trade cost, simplify the trade process, improve the trade efficiency. E-commerce has significantly changed the business model. Lead to the transformation of economic structure. In developed countries, the electronic commerce development unprecedented prosperity, trading via the Internet has become a trend. The purpose of this report will firstly show the changes of consumer behavior of converting physical shopping to E-shopping. Mainly, this report is to analyze the external and internal context base on the case study of ASOS. For the external environment, the essential driver of the success of ASOS is the emphasis. There are three approaches, Porter’s Five Forces, PEST analysis and strategic group mapping will be used to indicate ASOS’s commercial performance and observe competitor behavior and find out further opportunities to enlarge business pattern. The aim of analyzing the internal context of ASOS is to reveal its operational conditions and value chains. The following parts will contain its strategies and policies, and how its policies to affect target customer.