• A differentiator must control its cost structure to ensure the price of its products does not exceed the price customers are willing to pay for them • When differentiation stems from the design or physical features of the product, differentiators are at great risk of being imitated ▫ Example? • When differentiation stems from superior service or reliability, or from any intangible source a company is much more secure. ▫ Example?
For these reasons, it is necessary to analyze the competitive advantage of the different options presented. • Strengths and Opportunities: The project evaluation should consider a SWOT analysis of each potential application, which allows identifying the strengths, opportunities, threats and weaknesses. This way, it is possible to choose the best option, which maximized the firm’s strengths and opportunities, while mitigating its threats and weaknesses. • Barrier to Entry: Also it is necessary to analyze the cost of enter to the industry. • Economic Benefit: What will be the earnings associated to the project.. • Customer Preferences Bernstein should recommend to the board the
This strategy emphasizes the company’s ability to utilize its existing internal resources and focuses on streamlining operation through proper sizing and cost reduction. Even though this way could create short-term benefits to shareholder, this approach could negatively impact the company’s ability to adjust to external changes, especially rapid market and competitors’ changes. * Outside-in strategy: which is external market oriented strategy. Company makes the business decision according to the customer needs and market trends. It is “outside –in” thinking, which could help company to catch up with the market trend and develop products and services that meet the needs of customers.
A portfolio analysis help a company with making decisions on what products that they must considered to be the main focused and which one they should get rid of. The portfolio analysis raises the issue of cash flow availability for use in expansion and growth for products in the organization. The BCG Matrix and the portfolio analysis would benefit a company to see where they stand with their products and where they should put more focus on to bring that particular product up in the market. Even though there are products that are doing well for the organization they can also become problems. The economy is going through some tough times now and it could be hard to keep the stars the stars and the cash cow the cash cows (Portfolio Analysis,
Research competitors and industry trends to create new ideas and incentives. Compete with competitors – Price matching. With accurate information and efficient communication within the business will ensure business continuance despite possible problems. 4.0 Reports: Identify the types of reports you would be required to review regularly in order to monitor business performance, why is it important to create and use this report and who would the report be written for. 4.1: Performance Report: This report shows how well/poorly a business is doing based on a current revenue, and can identify performance areas that may need improvement.
Finally, we have seen how these incentives affect different types of organizations. We have seen cases where companies move for reasons that other may consider small like consultation, or travel. While others move because of additional material benefits, such as lower labor, and shipping costs. Because of the importance of this decision an organization should study the different types of incentives and chose the most beneficial to their
Being in the right location is a key ingredient in a business's success. If a company selects the wrong location, it may have adequate access to customers, workers, transportation, materials, and so on but may not be able to maximize it efficiently. Consequently, location often plays a significant role in a company's profit and overall success. A location strategy is a plan for obtaining the optimal location for a company by identifying company needs and objectives, and searching for locations with offerings that are compatible with these needs and objectives. Generally, this means the firm will attempt to maximize opportunity while minimizing costs and risks.
In supply chain management, strategic capacity planning controls the demand of new opportunities at minimal cost (Chase, Jacobs, and Aquilano, 2006). Strategic capacity planning is essential in establishing the permanent capacity capability a business needs to maintain or improve its market share. Poorly planned capacity needs can help the competition, costing the business customers (Chase, Jacobs, and Aquilano, 2006). Performing a break-even analysis would assist Riordan in calculating the proper capacity needs of their
Crystal Diaz MGT 451 Professor Widman June 13, 2010 1)What does customer satisfaction mean to you and how could you measure that in the stimulation? As Anderson, Fornell, and Rust state, “To compete in such a world, firms must strike the right balance between their efforts to compete efficiently and their efforts to compete effectively.” Two arguments were discussed, one that customer satisfaction and profitability are well-matched. For example, customers that are satisfied can decrease, “the time and effort devoted to handling returns, rework, warranties, and complaint management, while at the same time lowering the cost of making future transactions. The second theory believes that, “ increasing customer satisfaction should increase costs, as doing so often requires efforts to improve product attributes or overall product design.”
The strongest competitive advantage is a strategy that that cannot be imitated by other companies. Competitive advantage can be also viewed as any activity that creates superior value above its rivals. A company wants the gap between perceived value and cost of the product to be greater than the competition. Michael Porter defines three generic strategies that firm's may use to gain competitive advantage: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. A firm utilizing a cost leadership strategy seeks to be the low-cost producer relative to its competitors.