Lecture Notes for Chapter 5
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Chapter
Chapter Summary
5
The Five Generic Competitive Strategies
Chapter Five describes the five basic competitive strategy options – which of the five to employ is a company’s first and foremost choice in crafting overall strategy and beginning its quest for competitive advantage.
Lecture Outline
I. Introduction 1. There are several basic approaches to competing successfully and gaining a competitive advantage, but they all involve giving buyers what they perceive as superior value compared to the offerings of rival sellers. 2. This chapter describes the five basic competitive strategy option for building competitive advantage and delivering superior value to customers – which of the five to employ is a company’s first and foremost choice in crafting an overall strategy and beginning its quest for competitive advantage. II. Competitive Strategies and Industry Positioning. 1. By competitive strategy we mean the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully –its offensive and defensive moves to counter the maneuvers of rivals, its responses to whatever market conditions prevail at the moment, and its approach to securing a competitive advantage vis-à-vis rivals. 2. A company achieves competitive advantage whenever it has some unique way of delivering way of delivering superior value to customers. Core Concept
A competitive strategy concerns the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully and achieving a competitive advantage over rivals.
3. There are countless variations in the competitive strategies that companies employ, mainly because each company’s strategic approach entails custom-designed actions to fit its own circumstances and industry environment. 4. The biggest and most important differences among competitive strategies boil down to: a. whether a company’s market target is broad or narrow or
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Instructor’s Manual for Essentials of Strategic Management
b.