What should the firm determine when selecting a business level strategy?
A Business-Level Strategy can help your organization achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace. They provide a way to provide value to customers by exploiting your organization’s core competencies. Show
This sounds complex but isn’t. When you shop for clothes which do you prefer?
When it comes to buying clothes for yourself, you have many options. Competition is intense for your money. To get you to spend your hard-earned cash clothes retailers must stand out in the marketplace by differentiating themselves from the competition. One way to think about how you differentiate yourself is in terms of business-level strategies. One retailer might seek to minimize costs, passing those savings on to you. Another might try to have a strong brand that stands for something you identify with. Another might focus on top-end luxury with no expense spared on materials combined with a luxury shopping experience. What Are Business-Level Strategies?Business-Level Strategies are a mechanism for a business to achieve a competitive advantage. According to the Business-Level Strategies theory, there are two types of competitive advantage that an organization must choose between:
There are also two types of competitive scope than an organization must choose between:
Plotting all of the above factors on to a matrix gives us five generic business-level strategies. Note that no one generic strategy is better than another. An organization can be successful using any strategy. You need to choose the right strategy for your organization. Choosing the right generic strategy will depend on both what your competitors are doing (the external environment) and also where your strengths lie (your core competencies). Business-Level Strategy vs. Corporate-Level StrategyYou can think of Corporate-Level Strategies as happening at a higher level than Business-Level Strategies. Business-Level Strategies concern how an organization should compete, whereas Corporate-Level Strategies concern in what businesses an organization should compete. Another way to say this is that business-level strategy looks at how to win within a market, and corporate level strategy looks at what markets you should be in. For example, you might be in the vitamin niche. Your corporate-level strategies will determine what niches within the vitamin market you’ll compete in, for example, cod liver oil, muscle growth, etc. Your business-level strategy will determine how you intend to win in each of these markets. Let’s examine each of the five generic business-level strategies in turn. 1. Cost Leadership StrategyThis strategy is for organizations that want to compete for a broad customer base based on price. A misconception about this strategy is that returns are lower. That is not the case. To maintain above-average returns and provide the lowest price, the organization must focus on internal efficiencies continually. Common mechanisms to drive down costs include:
To be effective, this strategy requires your product or service to be standardized. Defensive PropertiesCost leadership can help defend your business against Porter’s 5 forces:
Cost Leadership ExampleAmazon is an example of a business using a cost leadership strategy. It focuses on attracting a large number of customers. It keeps prices low by using its vast buying power to buy products cheaply. This is then combined with no physical stores and state of the art distribution facilities to pass these savings on to consumers but still keep margins high. Risks
2. Differentiation StrategyThis strategy is for firms that want a broad customer base based on their uniqueness. Typically, firms with this strategy will focus on building unique features to win in the marketplace. They also usually charge a higher price to their customers, to offset the cost of being unique. Common mechanisms to differentiate include:
Defensive PropertiesDifferentiation can help defend your business against Porter’s 5 forces:
Differentiation Strategy ExampleApple is an example of a firm operating a differentiation strategy to sell its laptops to a broad market. Their unique design and engineering allow them to stand out in the marketplace. This enables them not only to charge a premium price but also to combat competitors. Risks
3. Focused Cost Leadership StrategyThese organizations compete on price but also stand out because they focus on serving a niche market. Common mechanisms to adopt a focused cost leadership strategy include:
Defensive PropertiesFocused cost leadership can help defend your business against Porter’s five forces in the same way that broad cost leadership can. Focused Cost Leadership ExampleCheckers is a US-based fast-food company that operates on a drive-in only basis. It saves money versus its competitors because it doesn’t offer customers anywhere to sit, and its buildings are cheaper to construct. Checkers targets the cheaper end of the market. However, despite this, Checkers can still achieve high-margins because it has lower overheads. Risks
4. Focused Differentiation StrategyThis strategy is very similar to that of a differentiation strategy except that it is focused on a very narrow segment of the market. These firms compete by offering unique features to a small market segment. Common mechanisms to focus include:
Defensive PropertiesBusinesses using a focused differentiation strategy can defend themselves against Porter’s 5 Forces in the same way as businesses using a broad differentiation strategy. Focused Differentiation ExampleRolls Royce cars is an example of a company using a focused differentiation strategy. Their cars are synonymous with prestige, quality, and engineering excellence. They are premium priced and focussed on a tiny subset of the global car market. Risks
5. Integrated Cost Leadership/Differentiation StrategyThis strategy involves producing low-cost products with differentiated features. This strategy is about simultaneously focusing on two drivers of competitive advantage: cost and differentiation. This type of strategy is often called a hybrid strategy. To understand the appeal of a hybrid strategy, realize that a mid-priced product that distinguishes itself in some way can be more appealing to customers than a cheap generic product. This can be a high-risk strategy because you must invest in both reducing costs (through automation, etc.) and also invest in differentiating your product. Integrated Cost Leadership/Differentiation ExampleIKEA is a great example of a business with an integrated cost leadership and differentiation strategy. It sells unique products that you can’t get elsewhere. It invests in its own designers to achieve this. It also sells it’s products at a low price. It invests in automation and logistics to do this. A less obvious example of a business using an integrated cost leadership and differentiation strategy is Southwest Airlines. Southwest Airlines provides cost leadership by:
It provides a level of differentiation by:
Risks
Whatever strategy you choose to adopt, you will need to configure your value chain to support the approach chosen. In the diagram below you can see all our examples mapped to the previous diagram. SummaryBusiness-Level Strategy theory states that there are essentially three strategies you as an organization can use to win in the marketplace: cost leadership, focus, or differentiation. Which one you choose with depend on market conditions and your unique set of core competencies. Cost leadership aims to increase market share by focusing on producing at low cost. Focus looks to dominate a small market segment by exclusively focusing on serving that segment (you can always add new segments later). Finally, differentiation aims to grow market share by concentrating my making your product or service different and unique. What is a firm's business level strategy?Business-level strategies examine how firms compete in a given industry. Firms derive such strategies by executives making decisions about whether their source of competitive advantage is based on price or differentiation and whether their scope of operations targets a broad or narrow market.
What are the most important components for business level strategy making?The four most widely accepted key components of corporate strategy are visioning, objective setting, resource allocation, and prioritization.
What are 5 business level strategies?Summary : There are only five business strategies: cost, quality, distribution, technology, and intellectual property (IP). All business strategies break down into these five, or some combination of them. As a general principle, focusing your organization on one is the easiest to execute.
|