Understanding the competitive and cooperative strategies available to corporations is an important concept discussed in this chapter. One desired outcome of analyzing strategic factors is identifying a niche where an organization can use its core competencies to take advantage of a particular market opportunity. A niche is a need in the marketplace that is currently unsatisfied. The goal is to find a propitious niche (an extremely favorable niche) which is so well suited to the firm’s internal and external environment that other corporations are not likely to challenge or dislodge it. Businesses that understand the power of specialization are thriving. Blackbaud is company that got rich in their niche. Businesses have many different options when it comes to accounting software. MYOB, QuickBooks, Freshbooks and Sage are all successful companies in that market. It is difficult to stand out among all this competition. But Blackbaud has achieved that with an average revenue growth rate exceeding 15% over the last 10 years. They achieved it by focusing on one group of customers with unique needs, nonprofit organizations. Competitive strategies are also very important for the survival of a firm. Michael Porter proposes three “generic” competitive strategies for outperforming other corporations in a particular industry, those are overall cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. These strategies are generic because they can be pursued by any type or size of business firm, even
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
There are many strategies that organizations can incorporate in today’s business environment. An organization can decide to take on a low-cost provider strategy, a focused low-cost strategy, broad differentiation strategy, focused differentiation strategy, and/or a best-cost provider strategy. While all of them have their own unique features and can offer a competitive advantage over its rivals, Competitive Shoes, Inc. decided to incorporate the best-cost strategy into its organization in order to compete against it rivals. By incorporating the best-cost strategy into its organization, Competitive Shoes Inc. felt that they could stay
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
In today’s highly competitive market, the continuous changes that are occurring in the social, politic and economic environment create serious challenges in the corporate world. Corporations cannot afford to do business as usual if they want to remain in the game and be successful. In order to achieve their goals and objectives, they need to evolve, adapt, learn and apply different new strategies that will help them secure long-run success and performance. Among those strategies, we are going to discuss ten of them and their advantages in connection with corporation’s goals and objectives.
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).
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).
According to Porter (1985) a company can apply three generic types of strategies to protect itself while competitive force is a key issue of the management. To achieve this position a strategy based on competency must be accomplished
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.
To attain competitive gain, organisations can differentiate their merchandise and services from their competitors they can also choose to lower their costs in order to compete with other contenders. By aiming their produces to a wide-ranging target, they are essentially covering most of the marketplace or if they choose, they can decide to concentrate on a narrower target within the market (Lynch 2003). While doing so may reduce their market range it essentially reduces their other competitors. Porter stated that there are three generic strategies that an organisation can follow to achieve competitive gain over other organisations. These are:
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).
Kuzmicki, Jana F. “The Five Generic Competitive Strategies.” (2009) The McGraw-Hill Companies. Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation.
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.
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
Porter’s generic strategies describe how a company attains competitive advantage across its chosen market scope. There are three generic strategies-cost leadership, differentiation and
The generic strategy allows the firm to react to the five forces better than their competitors (Worthington & Britton, 2006). According to Porter (1985), an organization can enjoy competitive advantage by focusing on the generic competitive strategies. The organization could enjoy competitive edge by either offering the product at low cost or differentiating the product from the competitors or by focusing on a specific market. Porter (1985) emphasized that the generic strategies should be at the centre of the strategic plans.