“the Five Competitive Forces That Shape the Strategy”

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While there are a lot of factors that can affect industry profitability in the short run, including the weather and the business cycle, industry structure, manifested in the competitive forces, sets industry profitability in the medium and long run. If these forces are too intense in an industry, it is very hard for a company to earn a return on investment. When the forces are benign many, if not all, companies are profitable. When some forces are stronger than others, those forces determine the profitability of the industry and they are the most important to look at when forming a strategy. Industry structure sets profitability in the long run and provides a framework for anticipating and influencing competition and profitability over time. The five competitive forces are threat of entrants, power of suppliers, power of buyers, threat of substitute products or services, and rivalry among existing competitors. First we have the threat of new entrants into the industry. New entrants bring new capacity and a desire to gain market share. This puts pressure on prices, costs, and the rate of investment necessary to compete in the industry. When the threat of new entrants is high, existing companies must hold down their prices or boost investment to deter new entrants. Something to be noted about this force is that it is not the physical entry of new competitors into the industry that drives profitability down, it is the threat of new entrants, which depends on the height of entry barriers that are present and on the reaction entrants can expect from incumbents. The major forces that lead to entry barriers are: supply-side economies of scale (deter entry by forcing entrants to either come into the industry on a large scale, which requires dislodging entrenched competitors, or to accept a cost disadvantage); demand-side benefits of scale (arise in industries where a

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