指导法国assignment 市场竞争策略的应用

这三个方法被称为“通用策略”,因为他们可以应用在所有行业产品或服务中以及各种规模的组织里。波特的通用策略实际上是通过“边缘”销售的方法来获得竞争优势，以此来增加市场份额。

成本领先

 

第一个一般性战略是成本领先，每个公司都立志于成为行业里生产成本最低的那一个，与此同时也希望公司的价值能够增加。在这一战略不要求产品的特殊性，而是看产品对于消费者的吸引力，公司专注于应用成本领先必须要努力降低成本，想要实现成本领先，企业通常要：
 

1.懂得结合并分享内部的资源
 

2.大力研发技术，减少成本
 

3.实现高效的物流体系，简洁的包装，做出明智的决策
 

4.较低的成本基础(劳动力、材料、设备),和其他可持续发展，尽可能降低成本低于其他竞争对手。
 

根据在市场和行业的成本来看，成本领先战略是三大战略中的领导者。但是仅仅是在成本上是最低的生产商可能还不够,因为离开公司这个负载体，开始攻击其他低成本生产商，只会消弱整个市场的价格竞争，因此我们还要阻止其他竞争对手提高市场份额。
 

Mastermind Of Competitive Strategies Application Marketingassignment
 

These three approaches are called "generic strategies", because they can be applied to products or services in all industries, and to organizations of all sizes. Porter's generic strategies are in fact ways of gaining competitive advantage by developing the "edge" that drives up sales and increase market share.

 

成本领先——Cost Leadership
 

The first generic strategy is cost leadership where a firm organises its value adding activities so as to be the lowest cost producer of a product or service in its industry. Under this strategy products do not need to be special or different but instead the main attractiveness to the consumer is the price. Firms that focus on applying cost leadership must work to cut down on costs in all areas and in order to achieving Cost Leadership companies usually have to:

 

Combine and share resources already in-house

 

Invest massively in technology that will bring costs down

 

Implement efficient logistics, processes and make wise outsourcing decisions

 

Lower cost base (labour, materials, facilities), and sustainably cutting costs below those of other competitors

 

The Cost Leadership strategy involves being the leader in terms of cost in the industry or market. Simply being amongst the lowest-cost producers may not be enough, as it leaves the company open to attack by other low cost producers who may undercut prices and therefore block attempts to increase market share.

 

There are two main ways of achieving competitive advantage within a Cost Leadership strategy:

 

Increasing profits by reducing costs, while still charging normal prices, represented by P1 in Figure 1.

 

Increasing market share through charging lower prices, while making a reasonable profit through economies of scale, represented by P2 in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1 - Competitive advantage through cost leadership

 

On good example of a successful cost leader is Wal-Mart. Sam Walton the founder of Wal-Mart has been very successful in cutting the cost, achieving the cost leader position. He was able to do so by adapting the IT system for the inventory of Wal-Mart stores and saved the company millions of dollars and times spent on the inventory process. Wal-Mart also has one of the most optimised distribution centres where trucks can make a maximum utilisation of them.

 

The greatest risk in pursuing a Cost Leadership strategy is that these sources of cost reduction are not unique, and other competitors can easily copy the cost reduction strategies. This is why it's important to continuously find ways of reducing every cost and develop an advantage that is not easily copied by others.

 

Finally, the common trap that firms usually fall into is that they become so concerned about maintaining low costs that research and development or marketing are overlooked, yet these are expenses the firm may need to incur in order to remain competitive.

 

差异化——Differentiation
 

The second strategy proposed by Porter is differentiation, which emphasises on the creation of unique product or service which increases its attractiveness vis-à-vis the competitors’ products. Differentiation is based upon organising value chain activities in such a way as to create differentiated products or services based on what the customers’ value such as design, performance, after sales service distribution channels and also brand image.

 

This strategy can only be implemented with the involvement of highly paid scientists and designers as well as the strong coordination of the research and development and marketing functions of the company. Success in this strategy would include higher profits and customer loyalty, on the other side a company employing a differentiation strategy, there would be extra costs that the company would have to incur. Such extra costs may include high advertising spending to promote a differentiated brand image for the product, which in fact can be considered as a cost and an investment.

 

In order to sustain this strategy companies should continuously develop differentiated products that match customer’s needs and preferences along trends, and in order to reach that, a company must monitor constantly its customers trying to identify their preferences and understand their behaviour, until the point of predicting how they can react to certain product changes.

 

To make a success of a generic differentiation strategy, organizations need:

 

Good research, development and innovation.

 

The ability to deliver high-quality products or services.

 

Effective sales and marketing, so that the market understands the benefits offered by the differentiated offerings.

 

On the other hand it is sometimes difficult for firms to estimate if the extra costs entailed in differentiation can actually be recovered from the customer through premium pricing. Moreover, successful differentiation strategy of a firm may attract competitors to enter the company’s market segment and copy the differentiated product.

 

Some companies like BMW and Mercedes employ differentiation strategies, organising their value adding activities so as to create modern design, high technology, high quality products which command premium prices. On the other hand McDonalds, for example, is differentiated by its very brand name and brand images of Big Mac and Ronald McDonald.

 

关注点——Focus
 

The third generic strategy is focus, which plays on the differences in consumers in the market, not specific products. Focus strategies are aimed at meeting the distinct preferences of a large group, or defining a product to better serve a larger group of consumers, even though the market share may be smaller. Success is found when consumers are drawn in and retained, and competitors do not copy the strategy.

 

To run a focus strategy a company must have a selective offering provided to selective markets, every process must be focus oriented, in both meeting the market segment needs and doing it with lower costs than the average of its competitors. After what a company will direct its efforts headed for a specific group whose specific needs were not satisfied for companies with the broader scope of differentiation. Because they serve customers in their market uniquely well, they tend to build strong brand loyalty amongst their customers. This makes their particular market segment less attractive to competitors.

 

According to Porter, for a successful implementation of a focus strategy the market must be a big one and expect to growth dramatically. And have for a company too much different segments in which it can focuses on or represent the impossibility to go to the broader perspective, because this are facts creating tradeoffs, and so barriers to imitation.

 

Porter initially presented focus as one of the three generic strategies, but later identified focus as a moderator of the two strategies. Companies employ this strategy by focusing on the areas in a market where there is the least amount of competition (Pearson, 1999). The company can make use of the cost leadership or differentiation approach with regard to the focus strategy. In that, a company using the cost focus approach would aim for a cost advantage in its target segment only. If a company is using the differentiation focus approach, it would aim for differentiation in its target segment only, and not the overall market.

 

The downfalls can include losing consumers due to preference changes, and losing business in the broader market. The focus on costs can also be difficult in industries where economies of scale play an important role. There is the evident danger that the niche may disappear over time, as the business environment and customer preferences change over time. Another risk is the fact that new comers would easily saturate the market that would bring about all the already known consequences.#p#分页标题#e#

 

Some examples of companies using focus as their strategy is the British car manufacturer TVR employs a differentiation focus strategy targeting the market for high performance cars. Whereas BMW and Mercedes target several segments of the market for motor vehicles, TVR currently target only one segment, selling their products on the basis of their exceptional performance rather than particularly on the basis of reliability or comfort.

 

Ferrari and Rolls-Royce are also classic examples of niche players in the automobile industry. Both these companies have a niche of premium products available at a premium price. Moreover, they have a small percentage of the worldwide market, which is a trait characteristic of niche players.

 

进退两难——Stuck in the middle
 

According to Porter (1980), a company’s failure to make a choice between cost leadership and differentiation essentially implies that the company is “stuck in the middle”. There is no competitive advantage for a company that is stuck in the middle and the result is often poor financial performance (Porter, 1980). Its customers may find more value in competitors with strong defined position.

 

If a firm attempts to achieve an advantage on all fronts, in this attempt it may achieve no advantage at all. For example, if a firm differentiates itself by supplying very high quality products, it risks undermining that quality if it seeks to become a cost leader. Even if the quality did not suffer, the firm would risk projecting a confusing image. For this reason, Michael Porter argued that to be successful over the long-term, a firm must select only one of these three generic strategies. Otherwise, with more than one single generic strategy the firm will be "stuck in the middle" and will not achieve a competitive advantage.

 

Porter also argued that firms that are able to succeed at multiple strategies often do so by creating separate business units for each strategy. By separating the strategies into different units having different policies and even different cultures, a corporation is less likely to become "stuck in the middle."

 

However, there exists a viewpoint that a single generic strategy is not always best because within the same product customers often seek multidimensional satisfactions such as a combination of quality, style, convenience, and price

 

In some industries, there were companies able to have a cost leadership and would choose to compete at prices comparables to the industry. This situation, according to Porter would be classified as stuck in the middle, but actually the financial situation of those companies were superior to the average, showing that even if a company can lower the prices there is no reason to do it when a customer will buy at a price of the industry, not entering a price war, and keeping profits in the hands of the company whose revenues will be higher, rather than in the hands of customers that were able to pay more for the same.

 

Successful companies like Toyota and Benetton, which have adopted more than one generic strategy. Both these companies used the generic strategies of differentiation and low cost simultaneously, which led to the success of the companies.