Building a Competitive Advantage Purpose of Assignment The purpose of this assignment is to help students understand how manufacturing and service companies can maximize their competitive advantage. The Porter Model is discussed as a method to categorize and assess businesses and industries. Assignment Steps Write a 1,050-word report in which you address the following: Examine and discuss competitive strategies that manufacturers can use to gain competitive advantage. Appraise costing and financial strategies for manufacturing and service companies. Identify value chain strategies for both manufacturing and service companies. Discuss (Porter’s Model) and categorize (NAICS) the industry of a company the Learning Team selects. Cite 3 scholarly references, including at least one peer-reviewed reference from the University Library. Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines. Attachments area

 

Building Competitive Advantage

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Building Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage is what drives an organization’s goods and services superior to the entire consumer’s preferences and other choices and there exists many strategies in which competitive advantage can be obtained; however, a majority concentrates on sample tried and accurate techniques of obtaining a leg up on the competition. These techniques can be entirely grouped into four various categories of competitive methods as the basis for getting to learn how businesses try to compete. Cost leadership is one of the ways that manufacturers can implement to acquire competitive advantage as all businesses will always strive to obtain cost leadership at all stages of production and service delivery. This type of benefit happens when a company is typically capable of offering the same quality of goods and services as that of its competitors, but at a lower price. According to Porter, M. E. (2011), cost leadership is likely to happen when an organization comes up with various methods of producing goods and services at a lower price via the perfection of production techniques or through the use of resources in a more effective way as that of its competitors.

Differentiation is the second method that a majority of businesses typically applies with the aim of setting themselves apart from their competitors. In this method, low cost is considered as one of the several possible considerations that may set aside a business from others and that any company that differentiates itself strategically look for one or more marketable traits that they possess and capable of setting them apart from their competitors. The same procedure is also useful in the other directions with organizations researching with the aim of determining the things that consumers consider essential and then coming up with a niche market for these goods.

Manufacturers can also use defensive methods as a way of gaining a competitive advantage within a business as the advantages acquired through this type of technique is that it creates room for the industry to distance itself from its competition through keeping a competitive edge it had previously gained. Therefore, this technique is slightly related to differentiation and cost leadership since it is a process utilized by various organizations to keep those advantages intact once they have been acquired or gained (Porter, 2011). This method is also active as it increasingly hard for the business competitors to come up with any real opposition to the business.

Appraise costing and financial strategies

 

References

Porter, M. E. (2011). Competitive advantage of nations: creating and sustaining superior performance (Vol. 2). Simon and Schuster.