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Discussion: Applying Strategies to Achieve Competitive Advantage How do business leaders know how to choose the best strategy for an organization? This question can be complex and nearly impossible to answer because there are multiple strategies that organizations can integrate, and some may work better in certain situations than others. For example, if a company produces luxury cars, it may not want to pursue a strategy that includes offering the lowest price in the market because that could be interpreted as a compromise on quality or some other aspect that consumers in that market might expect. Likewise, a company that competes in a market that is saturated with other brands of the same product might find that creating a cost-cutting strategy would allow it to be more profitable and to achieve a competitive advantage. In this Discussion, you will play the role of consultant and will give a selected organization some recommendations for what strategic approaches they should take to achieve competitive advantage.  To prepare for this Discussion: Identify an organization with which you are familiar that is in need of a change in its strategy in its pursuit of competitive advantage. Review this week’s Learning Resources, focusing specifically on the different competitive strategies and strategic frameworks you have learned about in this program. Consider the concept of the Blue Ocean strategy, as well as Porter’s five forces, vertical integration strategies, and others. Review the Academic Writing Expectations: Capstone Courses document, provided in this week’s Learning Resources. By Day 3 Post a 225- to 300-word (3- to 4-paragraph) analysis of how your selected organization can use competitive business strategies to create a competitive advantage. In your analysis, include the following: Examine two strategies that the organization could take to create and sustain competitive advantage. Explain why these strategies could be effective for the organization’s achievement of competitive advantage. Devise recommendations for how the organization could implement a Blue Ocean strategy or strategic approach to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. To support your response, be sure to reference at least one properly cited scholarly source.122Chapter 6 Supplementing the Chosen Competitive Strategy— Other Important Strategy Choices 122 Strategy: Core Concepts and Analytical Approaches Arthur A. Thompson, The University of Alabama 6th Edition, 2020-2021 An e-book published by McGraw-Hill Education 122 chapter 6 Supplementing the Chosen Competitive Strategy— Other Important Strategy Choices Winners in business play rough and don’t apologize for it. The nicest part of playing hardball is watching your competitors squirm. —George Stalk, Jr. and Rob Lachenauer Whenever you look at any potential merger or acquisi tion, you look at the potential to create value for your shareholders. —Dilip Shanghvi, Founder and managing director of Sun Pharmaceuticals Don’t form an alliance to correct a weakness and don’t ally with a partner that is trying to correct a weakness of its own. The only result from a marriage of weaknesses is the creation of even more weaknesses. —Michel Robert Think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything. —Dan Millman Once a company has settled on which of the five generic competitive strategies to employ, attention turns to what other strategic actions it can take to complement its competitive approach and maximize the power of its overall strategy. Several decisions must be made: n Whether to go on the offensive and initiate aggressive strategic moves to improve the company’s market position. n Whether to employ defensive strategies to protect the company’s market position. n What role the company’s website should play in its overall strategy to be a successful performer. n Whether to outsource certain value chain activities or perform them in-house. n Whether to integrate backward or forward into more stages of the industry value chain. n Whether to enter into strategic alliances or partnership arrangements with other enterprises. n Whether to bolster the company’s market position via mergers or acquisitions. Copyright © 2020 by Arthur A. Thompson. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of the contents are expressly prohibited without the author’s written permission Chapter 6 • Supplementing the Chosen Competitive Strategy—Other Important Strategy Choices 123 Copyright © 2020 by Arthur A. Thompson. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of the contents are expressly prohibited without the author’s written permission n When to undertake strategic moves—whether advantage or disadvantage lies in being a first mover, a fast follower, or a late mover. This chapter presents the pros and cons of each of these strategy-enhancing measures. Figure 6.1 shows the menu of strategic options a company has in crafting a comprehensive set of strategic actions and the order in which the choices should generally be made. The portion of Figure 6.1 below the five generic competitive strategy options illustrates the structure of this chapter and the topics that wChapter 5 The Five Generic Competitive Strategy Options: Which One to Employ? 101101 Strategy: Core Concepts and Analytical Approaches Arthur A. Thompson, The University of Alabama 6th Edition, 2020-2021 An e-book published by McGraw-Hill Education chapter 5 The Five Generic Competitive Strategy Options: Which One to Employ? Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals to deliver a unique mix of value. —Michael E. Porter Strategy is all about combining choices of what to do and what not to do into a system that creates the requisite fit between what the environment needs and what the company does. —Costas Markides The essence of strategy lies in creating tomorrow’s competitive advantages faster than competitors mimic the ones you possess today. —Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad Competing in the marketplace is like war. You have injuries and casualties, and the best strategy wins. —John Collins Acompany can employ any of several basic approaches to competing successfully and gaining a competitive advantage over rivals, but they all involve striving to deliver superior value to customers compared to the offerings of rival sellers. Superior customer value can mean a good product at a lower price, a superior product that is worth paying more for, or a best-value offering that represents an attractive combination of price, features, quality, service, and other appealing attributes. Delivering superior value—whatever form it takes— nearly always requires performing value chain activities differently from rivals and developing competitively potent resources and capabilities that rivals cannot readily match or trump. This chapter describes the five generic competitive strategy options. Each of the five strategy options represents a distinctly different approach to competing in the marketplace. Which of the five options to employ is a company’s first and foremost choice in crafting an overall strategy and beginning its quest for competitive advantage. 101 Copyright © 2020 by Arthur A. Thompson. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of the contents are expressly prohibited without the author’s written permission Chapter 5 • The Five Generic Competitive Strategy Options: Which One to Employ? 102 Copyright © 2020 by Arthur A. Thompson. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of the contents are expressly prohibited without the author’s written permission The Five Generic Competitive Strategies A company’s competitive strategy deals exclusively with the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully—how it intends to please customers, offensive and defensive moves to counter the maneuvers of rivals, responses to shifting market conditions, and initiatives to strengthen the company’s market position and achieve a particular kind of competi© 2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 1 Academic Writing Expectations: Capstone Courses Students at the capstone stage should understand how to use appropriate and relevant content to develop and explore ideas in writing. In the final project, students must be able to (a) display sentence-, paragraph-, and essay-level skills; (b) use evidence to support a claim in an academic argument and give credit to a source; and (c) provide the reader with documentation of research with a reference page. Capstone projects must contain the appropriate academic sources for the discipline. The writing should demonstrate an awareness of the importance of presentation style and audience. Walden capstone criteria align with the Association of American Colleges and Universities assessment rubrics for final projects. Final projects should be free of errors, cohesive, and comprehensive in scope. For more information, review the AACU website regarding capstone standards. A. Display sentence-, paragraph-, and essay-level skills. Sentence-level skills include proper use of grammar and punctuation rules. Paragraph-level skills include the use of evidence for idea (thesis) development. Essay-level writing skills, including the use of transitional material and organizational frames, help the reader follow the logic in an academic argument. Students must use discipline-specific conventions particular to a writing assignment, including academic expression, presentation, and stylistic choices, appropriate to a discipline-specific academic audience. B. Use evidence from research to support a claim and give credit to the source. In-Text Citations Overview: In general, in-text citations allow you to use evidence to support a claim. Examples of evidence include statistics, quotations, and other data that you find when you are conducting research on a topic. http://www.aacu.org/ http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/sentences http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/punctuation http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/paragraphs http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/arguments http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/thesisstatements http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/paragraphs/transitions http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/organizing http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/scholarlyvoice/clarity http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/templates http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/apa/other © 2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 2 Short Quotation With Signal Phrase A “signal phrase” appears at the beginning of a sentence that includes the name of the author. According to Jones (2010), “Students must practice writing in an academic voice” (p. 11). Short Quotation Without Signal Phrase Quotations