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competitive advantage Essay examples

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INTRODUCTION 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) This essay will critically analyze how competitive advantage is created i.e. Porter's 3 generic …show more content…

It is a no-frill carrier. They were able to cut cost by operating a no-frill carrier i.e. they don't use tickets or travel agents. Focus Porter's focus strategy is a mix of both the differentiation and the cost leadership strategies i.e. difference or cost leadership within a small target market segment. For instance: a company should be able to differentiate its products based on a particular target market segment because if the differences in products does not appeal to consumers in that target market as opposed to consumers in broad market, there would be no basis for differentiation and competitive advantage will not have been achieved. Selecting the Right Competitive Strategy 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. The 2nd school of thought opines that the strategies may be combined together to achieve CA. They believe that superior quality which is as a

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