Question No 01:- What are three activities or capabilities a firm should possess to support a low cost leadership strategy?Answer: Evaluating Cost Leadership Opportunities1. Business success built on cost leadership requires the business to be able to provide its product or service at a cost below what its competitors can achieve.a) Through the skills and resources identified in Exhibit 8.2, Evaluating aBusinesss Cost and Leadership Opportunities, a business must be able to accomplish one or more activities in its value chain activities procuring materials, processing them into products, marketing the products, and distributing the products or support activitiesin a more cost-effective manner than that of its competitors or it must be able to reconfigure its value chain so as to achieve a cost advantage.b) Exhibit 8.2 provides examples of such low-cost strategies.c) Strategists examining their businesss value chain for low-cost leadership advantages evaluate the sustainability of those advantages by benchmarking their business against key competitors and by considering the effect of any cost advantage on the five forces in their businesss competitive environment.2. Low-cost activities that are sustainable and that provide one or more of these advantages relative to key industry forces should become a key basis for the businesss competitive strategy.a) Low-cost advantages that reduce the likelihood of pricing pressure from Buyers.(1) When key competitors cannot match prices from the low-cost leader, customers pressuring the leader risk establishing a price level that drives alternate sources out of business.b) Truly sustained low-cost advantages may push rivals into other areas(1) Intense, continued price competition may be ruinous for all rivals, as seen occasionally in the airline industry.c) New entrants competing on price must face an entrenched cost leader without the experience to replicate every cost advantage.(1) Easy Jet, a British startup with a Southwest Airlines copycat strategy, entered the European airline market with much fanfare and low-priced, city-to-city, no-frills flights.(2) Analysts caution that by the time you read this, British Airways, KLMs no-frills offshoot Buzz, and Virgin Express will simply match fares on easy Jets key routes and let high landing fees and flight delays take their toll on the British upstart.d) Low-cost advantages should lessen the attractiveness of substitute Products.(1) A serious concern of any business is the threat of a substitute product in which buyers can meet their original need.(2) Low-cost advantages allow the holder to resist this happening because it allows them to remain competitive even against desirable substitutes, and it allows them to lessen concerns about price facing an inferior, lower-priced substitute.e) Higher margins allow low-cost producers to withstand supplier cost increases and often gain supplier loyalty over time.(1) Sudden, particularly uncontrollable increases in the costs suppliers face can be more easily absorbed by low-cost, higher-margin producers.(2) Once managers identify opportunities to create cost advantage based strategies, they must consider whether key risks inherent in cost leadership are present in a way that may mediate sustained success.(3) The key risks with which they must be concerned are discussed next.f) Many cost-saving activities are easily duplicated(1) Computerizing certain order entry functions among hazardous waste companies gave early adopters lower sales costs and better customer service for a brief time.(2) Rivals quickly adapted, adding similar capabilities with similar effects on their costs.g) Exclusive cost leadership can become a trap.(1) Firms that emphasize lowest price and can offer it via cost advantages where product differentiation is increasingly not considered must truly be convinced of the sustainability of those advantages.(2) Particularly with commodity-type products, the low-cost leader seeking to sustain a margin superior to lesser rivals may encounter. increasing customer pressure for lower prices with great damage to both leader and lesser players.h) Obsessive cost cutting can shrink other competitive advantages involving key product attributes.(1) Intense cost scrutiny can build margin, but it can reduce opportunities for or investment in innovation, processes, and products.(2) Similarly, such scrutiny can lead to the use of inferior raw materials, processes, or activities that were previously viewed by customers as a key attribute of the original products.i) Cost differences often decline over time.(1) As products age, competitors learn how to match cost advantages.(2) Absolute volumes sold often decline.(3) Market channels and suppliers mature.(4) Buyers become more knowledgeable.(5) All of these factors present opportunities to lessen the value or presence of earlier cost advantages.(6) Put differently, cost advantages that are not sustainable over a period of time are risky.

Three activities or capabilities a firm should possess to support a low-cost leadership strategy include a having a low-cost distribution system, tight cost control and frequent, detailed control reports. An example of a company that has achieved low-cost leadership through these capabilities is Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart invented the practice of sharing sales data via computer with major suppliers, such as Proctor & Gamble. Every time a box of Tide is rung up at the cash register, Wal-Mart's data warehouse takes note and knows when it is time to alert P&G to replenish a particular store.1 Utilizing real-time point-of-sales (POS) data transmission along with a sophisticated cross-docking system, Wal-Mart has created a just-in-time process of inventory control creating a substantial competitive cost advantage by improving its ability to reduce its shipping and handling cost and inventory storage.2Wal-marts world class inventory management has been integral in helping the company become the largest retailer in the world. In turn, leveraging its size and significant buyer power, Wal-Mart is frequently able to negotiate low-cost products from suppliers relative to competitors carrying similar items. Question No 02:- What are three activities or capabilities a firm should possess to support a differentiation based strategy?Answer: Once business managers have evaluated the cost structure of their value chain, determined activities that provide competitive cost advantages, and considered their inherent risks, they start choosing the businesss strategy.Those managers concerned with differentiation-based strategies, or those seeking optimum performance incorporating both sources of competitive advantage, move to evaluate their businesss sources of differentiation.a) Evaluating differentiation opportunities(1) Differentiation requires that the business have sustainable advantages that allow it to provide buyers with something uniquely valuable to them.(a) A successful differentiation strategy allows the business to provide a product or service of perceived higher value to buyers at a differentiation cost below the value premium to the buyers.(b) The buyer feels the additional cost to buy the product or service is well below what the product or service is worth compared with other available alternatives.(2) Differentiation usually arises from one or more activities in the value chain that create a unique value important to buyers.(a) A business can achieve differentiation by performing its existing value activities or reconfiguring in some unique way.(b) The sustainability of that differentiation will depend on two things: a continuation of its high perceived value to buyers and a lack of imitation by competitors.(3) Exhibit 8.3, Evaluating a Businesss DifferentiationOpportunities, provides examples of the types of key skills and resources on which managers seeking to build differentiation-based strategies would base their underlying, sustainable competitive advantages.(4) Strategists examining their businesss resources and capabilities for differentiation advantages evaluate the sustainability of those advantages by benchmarking their business against key competitors and by considering the effect of any differentiation advantage on the five forces in their businesss competitive environment.(a) Sustainable activities that provide one or more of the following opportunities relative to key industry forces should become the basis for differentiation aspects of the businesss competitive strategy.b) Rivalry is reduced when a business successfully differentiates itselfc) Buyers are less sensitive to prices for effectively differentiated productsd) Brand loyalty is hard for new entrants to overcome3. Managers examining differentiation-based advantages must take potential risks into account as they commit their business to these advantages. Some of the more common ways risks arise include:a) Imitation narrows perceived differentiation, rendering differentiation Meaningless.b) Technological changes that nullify past investments or learningc) The cost difference between low-cost competitors and the differentiated business becomes too great for differentiation to hold brand loyalty(1) Buyers may begin to choose to sacrifice some of the features, services, or image possessed by the differentiated business for large cost savings.(2) The rising cost of a college education, particularly at several premier institutions, has caused many students to opt for lower cost destinations that offer very similar courses without image, frills, and professors who seldom teach undergraduate students anyway.

Question No 03:- What are three ways a firm can incorporate the advantage of speed in its business?Answer: - Evaluating Speed as a Competitive Advantage

1. Speed-based strategies, or rapid response to customer requests or market and technological changes, have become a major source of competitive advantage for numerous firms in todays intensely competitive global economy.a) Speed is certainly a form of differentiation, but it is more than that.b) Speed involves the availability of a rapid response to a customer by providing current products quicker, accelerating new-product development or improvement, quickly adjusting production processes, and making decisions quickly.c) While low cost and differentiation may provide important competitive advantages, managers in tomorrows successful companies will base their strategies on creating speed-based competitive advantages.d) Exhibit 8.4, Evaluating a Businesss Rapid Response (Speed) Opportunities, describes and illustrates key skills and organizational requirements that are associated with speed-based competitive advantage.2. Speed-based competitive advantages can be created around several activities:a) Customer responsiveness(1) All consumers have encountered hassles, delays, and frustration dealing with various businesses from time to time.(2) The same holds true when dealing with business to business.(3) Quick response with answers, information, and solutions to mistakes can become the basis for competitive advantageone that builds customer loyalty quickly.b) Product development cyclesc) Product or service improvements(1) Like development time, companies that can rapidly adapt their products or services and do so in a way that benefits their customers or creates new customers have a major competitive advantage over rivals that cannot do this.d) Speed in delivery or distribution(1) Firms that can get you what you need when you need it, even when that is tomorrow, realize that buyers have come to expect that level of responsiveness.e) Information Sharing and Technology(1) Speed in sharing information that becomes the basis for decisions, actions, or other important activities taken by a customer, supplier, or partner has become a major source of competitive advantage for many businesses.(2) Telecommunications, the Internet, and networks are but a part of a vast infrastructure that is being used by knowledgeable managers to rebuild or create value in their businesses via information sharing.

Question No 04:- Do you think is it better to concentrate on one source of competitive advantage (cost versus differentiation versus speed) or to nurture all three in a firms operation?

Answer: There is an interchangeable quality in many of the skills and resources which foster cost leadership, differentiation and speed advantages. Likewise, the ways in which businesses achieve competitive advantage in cost leadership, differentiation and speed across Technology Development, Human Resource Management, General Administration and Procurement also share similar characteristics.A cost leadership advantage may have elements of both speed and differentiation (price is uniquely different from the competition). A speed advantage will certainly have high or low - cost implications. Differentiation as part of a value chain will invariably have speed (delivery or distribution) and cost dependencies.

By concentrating on one source of competitive advantage, because of their interrelatedness with the other two as part of the whole value chain, a company will subsequently create advantages in the remaining areas.

Question No 05:- How does market focus help a business create competitive advantage? What risks accompany such a posture?

Answer: Market focus is defined as the extent to which a business concentrates on a narrowly defined market. Market focus creates a competitive advantage because the business specializes in serving a narrowly defined market on the basis of low cost, differentiation, and rapid response against much larger businesses with greater resources that otherwise hold little interest in the niche market.The risk of focus is that, once a focused market is proven through growth and profit, major competitors may now wish to enter the market. According to the text, the greatest risk may be where the firm believes that it is focus that is creating the business success instead of the true success drivers of low cost, differentiation or rapid response factors.

Question No 06:- Using Exhibits 8.8 and 8.9, describe situations or conditions under which horizontal integration and concentric diversification would be preferred strategic choices.

Answer: Grand Strategy Selection Matrix

1. One valuable guide to the selection of a promising grand strategy is called the Grand strategy selection matrix shown in Exhibit 8.8.a) The basic idea underlying the matrix is that two variable s are or central concern in the selection process: (1) the principal purpose of the grand strategy and (2) the choice of an internal or external emphasis for growth or profitability.2. In the past, planners were advised to follow certain rules or prescriptions in their choice of strategies.a) Now, most experts agree that strategy selection is better guided by the conditions of the planning period and by the company strengths and weaknesses.b) It should be noted, however, that even the early approaches to strategy selection sought to match a concern over internal versus external growth with a desire to overcome weaknesses or maximize strengths.3. The same considerations led to the development of the grand strategy selection matrix.a) A firm in quadrant I, with all its eggs in one basket, often views itself as over-committed to a particular business with limited growth opportunities or high risks.b) One reasonable solution is vertical integration, which enables the firm to reduce risk by reducing uncertainty about inputs or access to customers.c) Another is conglomerate diversification, which provides a profitable investment alternative with diverting management attention from the original business.d) However, the external approaches to overcoming weaknesses usually result in the most costly grand strategies.e) Acquiring a second business demands large investments of time and sizable financial resources.f) Thus, strategic managers considering these approaches must guard against exchanging one set of weaknesses for another.

4. More conservative approaches to overcoming weaknesses are found in quadrant II.a) Firms often choose to redirect resources from one internal business activity to another.b) This approach maintains the firms commitment to its basic mission, rewards success, and enables further development of proven competitive advantages.c) The least disruptive of the quadrant II strategies is retrenchment, pruning the current activities of a business.d) If the weaknesses of the business arose from inefficiencies, retrenchment can actually serve as a turnaround strategythat is, the business gains new strength from the streamlining of its operations and the elimination of waste.e) However, if those weaknesses are a major obstruction to success in the industry and the costs of overcoming them are unaffordable or are not justified by a cost-benefit analysis, then eliminating the business must be considered.f) Divestiture offers the best possibility of recouping the firms investment, but even liquidation can be an attractive option if the alternatives are bankruptcy or an unwarranted drain on the firms resources.

5. A common business adage states that a firm should build from strength.

a) The premise of this adage is that growth and survival depend on an ability to capture a market share that is large enough for essential economies of scale.b) If a firm believes that this approach will be profitable and prefers an internal emphasis for maximizing strengths, four grand strategies hold considerable promise.c) As shown in quadrant III, the most common approach is concentrated growth, that is, market penetration.d) The firm that selects this strategy is strongly committed to its current products and markets.e) It strives to solidify its position by reinvesting resources to fortify its strengths.

6. Two alternative approaches are market development and product development.a) With these strategies, the firm attempts to broaden its operations.

b) Market development is chosen if the firms strategic managers feel that its existing products would be well received by new customer groups.c) Product development is chosen if they feel that the firms existing customers would be interested in products related to its current lines.d) Product development also may be based on technological or other competitive advantages.e) The final alternative for quadrant III firms is innovation.

f) When the firms strengths are in creative product design or unique production technologies, sales can be stimulated by accelerating perceived obsolescence.g) This is the principle underlying the innovative grand strategy.7. Maximizing a firms strengths by aggressively expanding its base of operations usually requires an external emphasis.a) The preferred options in such cases are shown in quadrant IV.b) Horizontal integration is attractive because it makes possible a quick increase in output capability.c) Moreover, in horizontal integration, the skills of the managers of the original business often are critical in converting newly acquired facilities into profitable contributors to the parent firm; this expands a fundamental competitive advantage of the firmits management.8. Concentric diversification is a good second choice for similar reasons.a) Because the original and newly acquired businesses are related, the distinctive competencies of the diversifying firm are likely to facilitate a smooth, synergistic, and profitable expansion.9. The final alternative for increasing resource capability through external emphasis is a joint venture or strategic alliance.a) This alternative allows a firm to extend its strengths into competitive arenas that it would be hesitant to enter alone.b) A partners production, technological, financial, or marketing capabilities can reduce the firms financial investment significantly and increase its probability of success.c) Model of Grand Strategy Clusters

1. A second guide to selecting a promising strategy is the grand strategy cluster shown in Exhibit 8.9, Model of Grand Strategy Clusters.a) The figure is based on the idea that the situation of a business is defined in terms of the growth rate of the general market and the firms competitive position in that market.b) When these factors are considered simultaneously, a business can be broadly categorized in one of four quadrants:(1) Strong competitive position in a rapidly growing market (quadrant I)(2) Weak position in a rapidly growing market (quadrant II)(3) Weak position in a slow-growth market (quadrant III)(4) Strong position in a slow-growth market (quadrant IV)c) Each of these quadrants suggests a set of promising possibilities for the selection of a grand strategy.2. Firms in quadrant I are in an excellent strategic position.a) One obvious grand strategy for such firms is continued concentration on their current business as it is currently defined.b) Because consumers seem satisfied with the firms current strategy, shifting notably from it would endanger the firms established competitive advantages.c) Either forward or backward integration helps a firm protect its profit margins and market share by ensuring better access to consumers or material inputs.d) Finally, to diminish the risks associated with a narrow product or service line, a quadrant I firm might be wise to consider concentric diversification; with this strategy, the firm continues to invest heavily in its basic area of proven ability.3. Firms in quadrant II must seriously evaluate their present approach to the marketplace.a) If a firm has competed long enough to accurately assess the merits of its current grand strategy, it must determine (1) why that strategy is ineffectual and (2) whether it is capable of competing effectively.b) Depending on the answers to these questions, the firm should choose one of four grand strategy options: formulation or reformulation of a concentrated growth strategy, horizontal integration, divestiture, or liquidation.4. In a rapidly growing market, even a small or relatively weak business often is able to find a profitable niche.a) Thus, formulation or reformulation of a concentrated growth strategy is usually the first option that should be considered.b) However, if the firm lacks either a critical competitive element or sufficient economies of scale to achieve competitive cost efficiencies, then a grand strategy that directs its efforts toward horizontal integration is often a desirable alternative.c) A final pair of options involves deciding to stop competing in the market or product area of the business.d) A multiproduct firm may conclude that it is most likely to achieve the goals of its mission if the business is dropped through divestiture.e) This grand strategy not only eliminates a drain on resources but also may provide funds to promote other business activities.f) As an option of last resort, a firm may decide to liquidate the business.g) This means that the business cannot be sold as a going concern and is at best worth only the value of its tangible assets.h) The decision to liquidate is an undeniable admission of failure by a firms strategic management and, thus, often is delayedto the further detriment of the firm.5. Strategic managers tend to resist divestiture because it is likely to jeopardize their control of the firm and perhaps even their jobs.a) Thus, by the time the desirability of divestiture is acknowledged, businesses often deteriorate to the point of failing to attract potential buyers.b) The consequences of such delays are financially disastrous for firm owners because the value of a going concern is many times greater than the value of its assets.6. Strategic managers who have a business in quadrant III and expect a continuation of slow market growth and a relatively weak competitive position will usually attempt to decrease their resource commitment to that business.a) Minimal withdrawal is accomplished through retrenchment; this strategy has the side benefits of making resources available for other investments and of motivating employees to increase their operating efficiency.b) An alternative approach is to divert resources for expansion through investment in other businesses.c) This approach typically involves either concentric or conglomerate diversification because the firm usually wants to enter more promising arenas of competition than integration or concentrated growth strategies would allow.d) The final options for quadrant III businesses are divestiture, if an optimistic buyer can be found, and liquidation.7. Quadrant IV businesses (strong competitive position in a slow-growth market) have a basis of strength from which to diversify into more promising growth areas.a) These businesses have characteristically high cash flow levels and limited internal growth needs.b) Thus, they are in an excellent position for concentric diversification into ventures that utilize their proven acumen.c) A second option is conglomerate diversification, which spreads investment risk and does not divert managerial attention from the present business.d) The final option is joint ventures, which are especially attractive to multinational firms.e) Through joint ventures, a domestic business can gain competitive advantages in promising new fields while exposing itself to limited risks.f) Opportunities for Building Value as a Basis for Choosing Diversification or Integration.1. The grand strategy selection matrix and model of grand strategy clusters are useful tools to help dominant product company managers evaluate and narrow their choices among alternative grand strategies.a) When considering grand strategies that would broaden the scope of their companys business activities through integration, diversification, or joint venture strategies, managers must examine whether opportunities to build value are present.b) Opportunities to build value via diversification, integration, or joint venture strategies are usually found in market-related, operating-related, and management activities.c) Such opportunities center around reducing costs, improving margins, or providing access to new revenue sources more cost effectively than traditional internal growth options via concentration, market development, or product development.d) Major opportunities for sharing and value building as well as ways to capitalize on core competencies are outlined in the next chapter, which covers strategic analysis and choice in diversified companies.2. Dominant product company managers who choose diversification or integration eventually create another management challenge.a) That challenge is charting the future of a company that becomes a collection of several distinct businesses.b) These distinct businesses often encounter different competitive environments, challenges, and opportunities.c) The next chapter examines ways managers of such diversified companies attempt to evaluate and choose corporate strategy.d) Central to their challenge is the continued desire to build value, particularly shareholder value.ASA University BangladeshPage 13