...Executive summary Businesses are run with ideologies which include concepts and principles. However, the most important thing in business is marketing because it creates awareness to customers of the products of a business. As this is the case, managing directors and marketing managers should always make sure that they employ effective marketing principles in attracting customers and retaining them. The objective of marketing is to retain existing customers and attracting new ones. Business is about satisfying customers and thus increasing their activity with your business. As in most business sectors there is tough competition meaning that businesses can only gain competitive advantage when they are effective in marketing & good customer service, which includes creating good rapport via public relations. However, this is not as easy as it sounds and much work has to be done in order to attain it. Customers will make choices of where to go for goods or services based on many things - including their perception of the attitudes of employees. Four main aspects have been selected as the main determinants of the success of any business. They include the place where the business is located, the product(s) itself, the price of the product and the manner in which the company promotes its products. A combination of the 4 P’s and a PEST analysis are likely to improve or produce excellent results. Introduction Applying marketing principles are the building blocks in business growth...
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...largest company-owned gourmet coffeehouse in the United States. However, the competitive market, along with a potential class-action lawsuit involving store managers has caused some serious issues, including increasingly high net losses and decreasing stock price. By providing “an experience that will make the day better” Caribou Coffee has created competitive advantage in their store operations, but the question remains whether they can maintain this and use it to sustain their growth strategy. Caribou Coffee’s dedication to creating a unique experience for customers by combining high quality products, a distinctive coffeehouse environment, and excellent customer service, differentiates their place in the coffeehouse industry. Creating strong human capital is the foundation for this differentiation strategy. The issue that will be analyzed in this case is whether or not Caribou Coffee’s efforts in developing human capital will enable them to achieve sustainable competitive advantage given the competition and threats they are facing. II. Defined In order for Caribou Coffee to maintain competitive advantage it must continue to create differentiation in its coffeehouses through their human capital. They have developed strong capabilities in recruiting, developing, and retaining their employees but this can be easily copied by competitors and by itself its not enough to sustain their advantages. To continue to grow they must maintain their strong focus on human capital,...
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...CONCEPT OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS CENTRAL TO THE STUDY OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, AND EXAMINE THE USE OF PORTER’S GENERIC STRATEGEIS BY COMPANIES TO COMPETE. KEY TERMS Competitive advantage. This is the favourable position an organization seeks in order to be more profitable than its competitors. Strategic management. It is the systematic analysis of the factors associated with customers and competitors (the external environment) and the organization itself (the internal environment) to provide the basis for maintaining optimum management practices. The objective of strategic management is to achieve better alignment of corporate policies and strategic priorities. Porter’s generic strategies. These are three general types of strategies developed by Michael Porter that are commonly used by businesses to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. Company. It is a voluntary association formed and organized to carry on a business. Types of companies include sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability, corporation, and public limited company. INTRODUCTION The concept of competitive advantage is central to the study of strategic management, since a company or an organization must follow an aligned strategy to outperform their rivals in the industry. Michael Porter introduces three generic strategies that a firm may apply in order to do so they include; overall cost leadership, Differentiation and Focus. In order to create and sustain competitive advantage, companies...
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...competitiveness and the possible influences on the success of its strategies. The focus of this paper will be an environmental scan of the internal and external environments of two real-world firms, their competitive advantages and company strategies for creating value and sustaining competitiveness, measurement guidelines for verifying strategic effectiveness and their evaluation. Internal and External Environments Environmental scanning of the internal organizational environment focuses on company culture, employee-employee, manager-employee, and manager-manager, manager-shareholder interactions, in addition to organizational structure, natural resources’ access and brand awareness, among others (Schneider, 1995, p.70). Environmental scanning of the external organizational environment focuses on the analysis of the industry/immediate environment, national, and macro-environments. Analysis of the industry environment appraises the competitive Environmental Scan Paper The business environment of an organization reveals much about its competitiveness and the possible influences on the success of its strategies. The focus of this paper will be an environmental scan of the internal and external environments of two real-world firms, their competitive advantages and company strategies for creating value and sustaining competitiveness, measurement guidelines for verifying strategic effectiveness and their evaluation. Internal and External Environments Environmental scanning of the internal...
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...9-798-062 REV: FEBRUARY 25, 2006 PANKAJ GHEMAWAT JAN W. RIVKIN Creating Competitive Advantage Some companies generate far greater profits than others. The pharmaceutical maker ScheringPlough produced an economic profit of more than $10 billion during the period 1984-2002. That is, the accounting profit it generated exceeded its cost of equity capital by that amount. Over the same period, U.S. Steel produced an economic loss of nearly $500 million; its cost of capital exceeded its accounting profit by a wide margin. Such large differences in economic performance are commonplace. Understanding their roots is crucial for strategists. Differences in industry structure shed some light on such differences in performance. To a certain extent, Schering-Plough has generated more economic profit than U.S. Steel because the pharmaceutical industry is structurally more attractive than the steel industry. Rivalry in the pharmaceutical market is muted by factors such as patent protection, product differentiation, and expanding demand; in contrast, rivalry in the steel industry is fierce—fueled by excess capacity, limited differences across products, and slow growth. Many pharmaceutical users hesitate to switch among products or brands, while steel customers are usually willing to switch among producers to get a better price. Many pharmaceuticals are made from commodities with little labor input, while unions exercise such power in the steel industry that labor costs often account for...
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...COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Introduction The aim of strategic management is to determine, create and maintain the competitive advantage of a firm. Competitive advantage is a firm’s ability to provide value to customers that exceed what its competitors can provide. Besides that, competitive advantage can be gained through maximal capitalization of the attributes and resources of the organization. Thus, competitive advantage is a strategy that organizations use to differentiate itself from its’ competitors. Superior value Superior value is a type of competitive advantage when value of products and services that are produced is superior to the competitor’s value. Superior value can be gained by differentiating the company products and service from its’ competitors. For example, FedEx was one of the first companies to introduce package-tracking capability. This tracking capability allows FedEx customer to track their package along its’ route of being delivered. Thus, FedEx gained superior value over its’ competitors by providing such a service. Although other courier services eventually provided such service, FedEx capitalized on its’ superior value and continuously upgrade it. Therefore, other courier services could not match up its package tracking services. Rarity When a company capitalizes on its product/service rarity, it gives the company a competitive advantage where no other firms have the capabilities needed to provide the quality and quantity of product and services...
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...decisions and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantage” (Dess, Lumpkin, Eisner, & McNamara, 2014). Strategic management focuses on the entire organization and is used by Pixar by putting their ideas to reality. They use strategic planning to create valuable products for their audience. Through computer animation and cooperation between employees in the organization Pixar creates unique characters and stories that relates with their audiences and it how they have created their competitive advantage. Pixar’s competitive advantages are their employees and technologies, which is how the company can compete and how they have reached success. Their vision, mission and strategic objectives are the foundation of the way they work, and they make decision based on their external and internal environment and then take action to create a story and characters that will be remembered. Pixar’s innovative ideas, decisions and actions have created their success. What they want is create quality stories that last with each generation. So they have used that idea to direct the organization towards overall goals and objectives. Pixar leaders/managers include their stakeholders in the decision making, which created a culture that shares knowledge and information. Their long term perspective to move the hearts and minds of family audiences and short term perspective of creating quality story telling is the principle of how people work within the organization...
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...OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE CREATION AND MAINTENANCE OF SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE A. Talebnejad[1] Faculty of Management and Accounting Shahid Beheshti University Email: taleb149@yahoo.com Abstract -By the appropriate use of information technology, organizations can achieve sustainable competitive advantages. This technology because of including some characteristics such as being up-to-date, fast and precise and having different geographic localities all the time, has improved organizational efficiency, effectiveness and performance. In this article, we intend to investigate the role and effect of information technology in the creation and maintenance of sustainable competitive advantages from two different approaches: market-based approach and the resource-based approach. In the Market-based approach, meeting customer's and creating values for them, using information technology and the issue of achieving the competitive advantage and position in the market by organizations are addressed. In the resource-based approach, compatibility of the organization's resources such as those of information technology and organizational skills, particularly managerial ones are investigated. Amongst different organizational skills and resources, only managerial skills of information technology can create a sustainable competitive advantage. Keywords: Information Technology, Sustainable Competitive Advantage, Creation of Value for Customers, Resource-Based Approach, Market-Based...
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...IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES Video: Panera Bread Cohesion Case: Competitive Advantage:Business Dilemma To survive and thrive, an organization must create a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is a product or service that an organization's customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor. Unfortunately, competitive advantages are typically temporary because competitors often seek ways to duplicate the competitive advantage. In turn, organizations must develop a strategy based on a new competitive advantage. When an organization is the first to market with a competitive advantage, it gains a first-mover advantage. The first-mover advantage occurs when an organization can significantly impact its market share by being first to market with a competitive advantage. FedEx created a first-mover advantage by creating its customer self-service software, which allows people and organizations to request parcel pickups, print mailing slips, and track parcels online. Other parcel delivery companies quickly began creating their own online services. Today, customer self-service on the Internet is a standard for doing business in the parcel delivery business. Page 14 As organizations develop their competitive advantages, they must pay close attention to their competition through environmental scanning. Environmental scanning is the acquisition and analysis of events and trends in the environment external to an organization. Information technology...
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...Environmental Scan Environmental scanning is very important to a company’s long term and short term run within a business. In this paper there will be two businesses being evaluated through the scanning process. The SWOT analysis is the tool of choice. The SWOT analysis will provide the strengths and weaknesses of each company. The environmental scanning monitors help companies evaluate information from the internal and external factors of a company. The two companies being evaluated is USPS and Wal-Mart. The USPS internal and external factors are as follows: market and economic conditions, competitor actions, regulations, seasonality, and trend (" Internal and External Factors", 2014). The Internal factors are maintenance concepts, pricing strategies, product change, changes in usage factors, and promotions and advertising for products or services"(" Internal and External Factors", 2014). The USPS has to have better pay than the competitors to keep the employees. The carriers are paid well with USPS and tend to stay until the time they are eligible to retire. The "Performance Measurement Systems" (2004) website "External First-Class Measurement System (EXFC) is not a system-wide measurement of all First-Class Mail service performance". The USPS has very effective guidelines and follows protocol to the "T". The USPS takes great steps when ensuring quality service...
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...A Way to profit improvement & cost Reduction Learning Objective 1. how to identify the value added activity 2. how to rectify the non –value added activity 3. application in profit planning & cost reduction INTRODUCTION Competitive advantage for a company means not just matching or surpassing their competitors, discovering what the customers want and then profitably satisfying, and even exceeding their expectations. As barriers to inter-regional and international trade are diminishing and as access to goods and services are growing, customers can locate after identification and «the best of what they want, at an acceptable price, wherever it is in the world. Under growing competition and, hence, rising customer expectations, a company's penalty for complacency becomes even greater. A strategic tool to measure the importance of the customer's perceived value is value chain analysis. By enabling companies to determine the strategic advantages and disadvantages of activities and value-creating processes in the market place, value chain analysis becomes essential for assessing competitive advantage. Value analysis or value engineering is one of the most widely used cost reduction techniques. It can be defined as a technique that yields value improvement. It investigates into the economic attributes of value. It attempts to reduce cost through a. design change...
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...Types of competitive advantage and sustainability 3 generic strategies that a firm can use to overcome the five forces and achieve competitive advantage. 1. Overall cost leadership, is based on creating a low-cost-position. 2. Differentiation requires a firm to create products and/ or services that are unique and valued. 3. Focus strategy directs attention toward narrow product lines, buyer segments, or targeted geographic markets and they must attain advantages either through differentiation or cost leadership. Overall cost leadership Overall cost leadership: a firm’s generic strategy based on appeal to the industrywide market using a competitive advantage based on low cost. This strategy requires a tight set of interrelated tactics that include: * Aggressive construction of efficient-scale facilities * Vigorous pursuit of cost reductions from experience * Tight cost and overhead control * Avoidance of marginal customer accounts * Cost minimization in all activities in the firm’s value chain, such as R&D, service, sales force, and advertising. Experience curve: the decline in unit costs of production as cumulative output increase. Competitive parity: a firm’s achievement of similarity, or being “on par”, with competitors with respect to low cost, differentiation, or other strategic product characteristic. Overall cost leadership: improving competitive position vis-à-vis the five forces * An overall low-cost position enables...
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...Assessing Competitive Advantage CREDITS This statement was approved for issuance as a Statement on Management Accounting by the Management Accounting Committee (MAC) of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). IMA appreciates the support of The Society of Management Accountants of Canada (SMAC) in helping create this SMA and extends appreciation to Joseph G. San Miguel, of the Naval Postgraduate School, who drafted the manuscript. Published by Institute of Management Accountants 10 Paragon Drive Montvale, NJ 07645-1760 www.imanet.org Special thanks are due to Randoif Holst, SMAC Manager, Management Accounting Guidelines, for his continuing project supervision and to the members of the focus group (including MAC members Dennis Daly and Thomas Huff) for contributing to the improvement of the final document. Copyright © 1996 Institute of Management Accountants All rights reserved Statements on Management Accounting PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING Value Chain Analysis for Assessing Competitive Advantage TABLE OF CONTENTS I. II. III. IV. Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Value Chain Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Competitive Advantage and Customer Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 V. The Role of the Management Accountant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 VI. The Value Chain Approach for Assessing Competitive Advantage...
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...and bottom-up approach was used to develop the proposed framework. The top-down approach focused on analyzing the main strategic management theories including social responsibility movements to identify complementary concepts and create a relevant topology. The bottom-up approach was based on empirical research on the views of business companies on corporate social responsibility, a review of best practices and case studies mainly in Greece. Findings – The paper describes a stakeholder-oriented integrative strategic management framework linking the main strategic management theories across value, responsiveness and responsibility dimensions. A mathematical model is presented describing the synergistic development of advantage-creating knowledge and advantage-creating stakeholder relations in accordance with the criteria of the resource-based theory. Research limitations/implications – The proposed management framework is based on the results of research projects and is not fully developed and tested. The approach will be refined, exploiting results from ongoing research including further empirical research and testing in business...
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...using environmental scanning and objective 2.2, Determine relevant business competitive strategies are the easiest parts of the reading this week to understand. The team has decided that most difficult objective to understand is objective 2.4, choose measurement guidelines to verify strategy effectiveness. The team believes that objective 2.1 is easy to understand because it encompasses environmental scanning, this just takes a good look at the organization to help determine the strengths, weakness, and resources available internally. In the reading we began to understand that environmental scanning involves studying an organizations industry or business field along with opportunities and threats from an external perspective. Our team came to the conclusion that 2.1 is basically like the SWOT analysis. Companies should use this objective to scan its market for opportunities and make the essential adjustments or change to remain competitive. When the team analyzed objective 2.1, we had some question regarding how can an organization prepare for a new product, especially when it has not been launched. What are the steps and how are a company to prepare for a new or potential threat? Our Team C has analyzed the aforementioned questions and had developed solutions. One solution is that a company can launch a new product by just creating value from the onset to sustain a competitive advantage. Creating value is difficult sometimes especially, when...
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