Essay On Competitive Advantage

3.2 RANGE OF STRATEGIES THAT CAN CONTRIBUTE TO A BUSINESS COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

When a business thrives in gaining competitive advantage, it often sets eyes on a manifold of strategies that aim to em-better its image and its competitive positioning. It focuses on strategies that may help increase its rate of consumers acquisition, retention and satisfaction; strategies of industry and competitors analysis. Moreover, it sets eyes on those strategic process to build strong investments portfolios ( Liquidity) that can help establish longevity and leadership in the market. Competitive advantage inevitably leads to faster, continual exponential growth, increased sales, market share gains and overall business profitability.

Competitive

The success of differentiation relies on a company internal strengths: highly developed R&D, efficient marketing, branding and advertising, highly skilled product or service development teams, superior quality and innovation, finally fast delivery and effective distribution channels. Example: Apple's iPod was a breakthrough innovation because of its stylish design, its unique straightforward features. It allowed users to store a gigantic amount of music in one place, and further permitted users to play any genre in any order unlike the obsolete mp3 CD player which allowed limited possibilities. Also the original white colour of the device made it a revolution and a statement in the its industry. Let's also note that differentiation can become accentuated through competitive positioning which is about defining how a company will “differentiate” its offering while creating value to the market. The use of a positioning statement mark the very beginning of the differentiation process. Example: Apple Inc “ Think

PRAHALAD/The new age of innovation 2008) Absence of a needed core competency may result in a significant strategic challenge or disadvantage in the marketplace. Leadership effectiveness, workforce capability and engagement, unique culture, organizational system and structure, operational performance, customer satisfaction and relationship can all be considered as core competencies.

-Innovation: Tapping into innovation is having a visionary approach to life, competitiveness and a will of service to humanity. With high research and development capabilities as well as extended product development and technological advancement innovation remains the most immediate way for a company to differentiate itself from its competitors. Superiority in performance is gained through it. Innovative products, processes or new business models provide strong competitive edge due to the first mover advantage. A company gains leverage over competition when it is the first to use a technology or to experiment with a process. Examples: Apple’s reinvigoration of the tablet market by introducing the IPAD in 2010. Tesla improvement of transportation safety in 2016 with the introduction of self driving autonomous features in their electric vehicles. 1979's Nike introduction of the air sole technology. Innovation is used to develop new or better products,