Competitive advantage refers to factors that allow a company to produce goods or services better or more cheaply than its rivals. These factors allow the productive entity to generate more sales or superior margins compared to its market rivals. Competitive advantages are attributed to a variety of factors including cost structure, branding, the quality of product offerings, the distribution network, intellectual property, and customer service.
Competitive advantages generate greater value for a firm and its shareholders because of certain strengths or conditions. The more sustainable the competitive advantage, the more difficult it is for competitors to neutralize the advantage. The two main types of competitive advantages are comparative advantage and differential advantage.
The term "competitive advantage" traditionally refers to the business world, but can also be applied to a country, organization, or even a person who is competing for something. A firm's ability to produce a good or service more efficiently than its competitors, which leads to greater profit margins, creates a comparative advantage. Rational consumers will choose the cheaper of any two perfect substitutes offered. For example, a car owner will buy gasoline from a gas station that is 5 cents cheaper than other stations in the area. For imperfect substitutes, like Pepsi versus Coke, higher margins for the lowest-cost producers can eventually bring superior returns. Economies of scale, efficient internal systems, and geographic location can also create a comparative advantage. Comparative advantage does not imply a better product or service, though. It only shows the firm can offer a product or service of the same value at a lower price. For example, a firm that manufactures a product in China may have lower labor costs than a company that manufactures in the U.S., so it can offer an equal product at a lower price. In the context of international trade economics, opportunity cost determines comparative advantages. Amazon (AMZN) is an example of a company focused on building and maintaining a comparative advantage. The e-commerce platform has a level of scale and efficiency that is difficult for retail competitors to replicate, allowing it to rise to prominence largely through price competition. A differential advantage is when a firm's products or services differ from its competitors' offerings and are seen as superior. Advanced technology, patent-protected products or processes, superior personnel, and strong brand identity are all drivers of differential advantage. These factors support wide margins and large market shares. Apple is famous for creating innovative products, such as the iPhone, and supporting its market leadership with savvy marketing campaigns to build an elite brand. Major drug companies can also market branded drugs at high price points because they are protected by patents.
If a business can increase its market share through increased efficiency or productivity, it would have a competitive advantage over its competitors.
Lasting competitive advantages tend to be things competitors cannot easily replicate or imitate. Warren Buffet calls sustainable competitive advantages economic moats, which businesses can figuratively dig around themselves to entrench competitive advantages. This can include strengthening one's brand, raising barriers to new entrants (such as through regulations), and the defense of intellectual property.
Competitive advantages that accrue from economies of scale typically refer to supply-side advantages, such as the purchasing power of a large restaurant or retail chain. But advantages of scale also exist on the demand side—they are commonly referred to as network effects. This happens when a service becomes more valuable to all of its users as the service adds more users. The result can often be a winner-take-all dynamic in the industry.
Comparative advantage mostly refers to international trade. It posits that a country should focus on what it can produce and export relatively the cheapest—thus if one country has a competitive advantage in producing both products A & B, it should only produce product A if it can do it better than B and import B from some other country.
Given that almost anything a firm possesses can be considered a resource or capability, how should you attempt to narrow down the ones that are core competencies, and explain why firm performance differs? To lead to a sustainable competitive advantage, a resource or capability should be valuable, rare, inimitable (there are no substitutes), and possessed by the organization despite it being costly to imitate in terms of time or money or both. This VRIO framework is the foundation for internal analysis. VRIO is an acronym for valuable, rare, inimitable, and organization (as in owned by the organization). If you ask managers why their firms do well while others do poorly, a common answer is likely to be “our people.” But this is really not a complete answer. It may be the start of an answer, but you need to probe more deeply—what is it about “our people” that is especially valuable? Why don’t competitors have similar people? Why haven’t competitors hired our people away? Or is it that there is something special about the organization that brings out the best in people? These kinds of questions form the basis of VRIO and get to the heart of why some resources help firms more than others. Moreover, your ability to identify whether an organization has VRIO resources will also likely explain their competitive position. In the figure, you can see that a firm’s performance relative to industry peers is likely to vary according to the level to which resources, capabilities, and ultimately core competences satisfy VRIO criteria. The four criteria are explored next. ValuableA resource or capability is said to be valuable if it allows the firm to exploit opportunities or negate threats in the environment. If a resource does not allow a firm to minimize threats or exploit opportunities, it does not enhance the competitive position of the firm. In fact, some scholars suggest that owning resources that do not meet the VRIO test of value actually puts the firm at a competitive disadvantage.
Union Pacific’s extensive network of rail-line property and equipment in the Gulf Coast of the United States is valuable because it allows the company to provide a cost-effective way to transport chemicals. Because the Gulf Coast is the gateway for the majority of chemical production in the United States, the rail network allows the firm to exploit a market opportunity. Delta’s control of the majority of gates at the Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) gives it a significant advantage in many markets. Travelers worldwide have rated CVG one of the best airports for service and convenience 10 years running. The possession of this resource allows Delta to minimize the threat of competition in this city. Delta controls air travel in this desirable hub city, which means that this asset (resource) has significant value. Earn credit, add your own example! RareA resource is rare simply if it is not widely possessed by other competitors. Of all of the VRIO criteria this is probably the easiest to judge. For example, Coke’s brand name is valuable but most of Coke’s competitors (Pepsi, 7Up, RC) also have widely recognized brand names, making it not that rare. Of course, Coke’s brand may be the most recognized, but that makes it more valuable, not more rare, in this case. A firm that possesses valuable resources that are not rare is not in a position of advantage relative to competitors. Rather, valuable resources that are commonly held by many competitors simply allow firms to be at par with competitors. However, when a firm maintains possession of valuable resources that are rare in the industry they are in a position of competitive advantage over firms that do not possess the resource. They may be able to exploit opportunities or negate threats in ways that those lacking the resource will not be able to do. Delta’s virtual control of air traffic through Cincinnati gives it a valuable and rare resource in that market. How rare do the resources need to be for a firm to have a competitive advantage? In practice, this is a difficult question to answer unequivocally. At the two extremes (i.e., one firm possesses the resource or all firms possess it), the concept is intuitive. If only one firm possesses the resource, it has significant advantage over all other competitors. However, meeting the condition of rarity does not always require exclusive ownership. When only a few firms possess the resource, they will have an advantage over the remaining competitors. For instance, Toyota and Honda both have the capabilities to build cars of high quality at relatively low cost. Their products regularly beat rival firms’ products in both short-term and long-term quality ratings. Thus, the criterion of rarity requires that the resource not be widely possessed in the industry. It also suggests that the more exclusive a firm’s access to a particularly valuable resource, the greater the benefit for having it.
In the race to be first with 5G technology competitors are scrambling to win bids in a new wireless high-band spectrum. The Federal Communications Commission in April 2019 announced its third and largest auction for fifth generation networks that promise a major speed increase for downloading data over cellular networks. The White House considers service in rural areas and security for 5G to be essential to keep the country competitive for billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices like autonomous cars and industrial sensors. In recent months the U.S. and China have imposed tariffs against each other and with no American companies manufacturing the main switch networks, the new network will rely on European companies Nokia and Ericsson. Source: New York Times, Trump Announces 5G Plan as White House Weighs Banning Huawei, Zeqing Liu, 2019Sp InimitableAn inimitable (the opposite of imitable) resource is difficult to imitate or to create ready substitutes for. A resource is inimitable and non-substitutable if it is difficult for another firm to acquire it or to substitute something else in its place. A valuable and rare resource or capability will grant a competitive advantage as long as other firms do not gain subsequent possession of the resource or a close substitute. If a resource is valuable and rare and responsible for a market leader competitive advantage, it is likely that competitors lacking the resource or capability will do all that they can to obtain the resource or capability themselves. This leads us to the third criterion—inimitability. The concept of imitation includes any form of acquiring the lacking resource or substituting a similar resource that provides equivalent benefits. The criterion important to be addressed is whether competitors face a cost disadvantage in acquiring or substituting the resource that is lacking. There are numerous ways that firms may acquire resources or capabilities that they lack.
A tablet computer has been around for years but it wasn’t until the iPad when the market finally took off. Apple has designed something that is hard to imitate successfully and this can be proven by the number of knockoffs and imitation products of the iPod, iPad and MacBook that have failed to gain a large portion of market share. Source: Christopher S Penn, What Is Your Business Core Competency?, 2018Fa As strategy researcher Scott Gallagher notes: This is probably the toughest criterion to examine because given enough time and money almost any resource can be imitated. Even patents only last 17 years and can be invented around in even less time. Therefore, one way to think about this is to compare how long you think it will take for competitors to imitate or substitute something else for that resource and compare it to the useful life of the product. Another way to help determine if a resource is inimitable is why/how it came about. Inimitable resources are often a result of historical, ambiguous, or socially complex causes. For example, the U.S. Army paid for Coke to build bottling plants around the world during World War II. This is an example of history creating an inimitable asset. Generally, intangible (also called tacit) resources or capabilities, like corporate culture or reputation, are very hard to imitate and therefore inimitable. OrganizationThe fourth and final VRIO criterion that determines whether a resource or capability is the source of competitive advantage recognizes that mere possession or control is necessary but not sufficient to gain an advantage. The firm must likewise have the organizational capability to exploit the resources. Think of it in terms of whether the organization owns the capability. Alternatively, think of organization ownership in terms of how much it would cost to copy the capability in terms of time or money or both.
A critical part of Apple’s success is their organizational structure. They take advantage of a hierarchical organizational structure, which is a traditional structure seen in many organizations. The three main characteristics of this structure are spoke-and-wheel hierarchy, product-based divisions, and a weak functional matrix. While this gives them strong organizational control, it also limits organizational flexibility, and is something other corporations should consider when choosing an organizational structure. Source: Seeking Alpha, Approach Resources: Hindered By High Fixed Costs, 2018Fa The question of organization is broad and encompasses many facets of a firm but essentially means that the firm is able to capture any value that the resource or capability might generate. Organization, essentially the same form as that taken in the P-O-L-C framework, spans such firm characteristics as control systems, reporting relationships, compensation policies, and management interface with both customers and value-adding functions in the firm. A valuable but widely held resource only leads to competitive parity for a firm if they also possess the capabilities to exploit the resource. Likewise, a firm that possesses a valuable and rare resource will not gain a competitive advantage unless it can actually put that resource to effective use. Many firms have valuable and rare resources that they fail to exploit (the question of imitation is not relevant until the firm exploits valuable and rare resources). For instance, for many years Novell had a significant competitive advantage in computer networking based on its core NetWare product. In high-technology industries, remaining at the top requires continuous innovation. Novell’s decline during the mid- to late 1990s led many to speculate that Novell was unable to innovate in the face of changing markets and technology. However, shortly after new CEO Eric Schmidt arrived from Sun Microsystems to attempt to turnaround the firm, he arrived at a different conclusion. Schmidt commented: “I walk down Novell hallways and marvel at the incredible potential of innovation here. But, Novell has had a difficult time in the past turning innovation into products in the marketplace.” He later commented to a few key executives that it appeared the company was suffering from “organizational constipation.” Novell appeared to still have innovative resources and capabilities, but they lacked the organizational capability (e.g., product development and marketing) to get those new products to market in a timely manner.
The company now known as RTW Retailwinds has began implementing celebrity brands, including Kate Hudson, which is now part of their core competency as they continue to expand. The Kate Hudson line of products as well as any future celebrity brands are all valuable, rare and imitable within the same quality standards and can be difficult for other retailers to copy through the same celebrity partners. RTW is one of the largest omni-channel retailers for women and will only continue to grow. Source: Dayton Daily News, Women’s clothing retailer with local presence moving forward with name change, Ariadna Archibald, 2018Fa SWOT and VRIOAs you already know, many scholars refer to core competencies. A core competency is simply a resource, capability, or bundle of resources and capabilities that is VRIO. While VRIO resources are the best, they are quite rare, and it is not uncommon for successful firms to simply be combinations of a large number of VR _ O or even V _ _ O resources and capabilities. Recall that even a V _ _ O resource can be considered a strength under a traditional SWOT analysis. |
Which of the following is not a means of building and strengthening competitively valuable resources and capabilities?
zusammenhängende Posts
Urheberrechte © © 2024 wiewird Inc.
