1. What is Vancity 's competitive advantage over other types of financial institutions? As globalization increased competition through the worldwide interconnectedness, it became more difficult to hold on to a company’s competitive advantage. Vancity, founded in 1946, enjoys its own competitive advantage to be one of the greatest employers in Canada.
The assembly line, whose use in industry was spurred by Henry Ford in his automobile factories. The assembly line, interchangeable parts, and other inventions vastly increased the speed of production and lowered production costs. Because of these new manufacturing techniques speeding and cheapening production, “[People’s] clothes are cheaper, [People] have an infinite number of domestic utensils,” and [People are surrounded…with an infinite number of comforts and conveniences…within reach of almost all men,” (Document 9). Faster and cheaper production meant bountiful and cheaper products that could be sold to the public. Anybody could purchase a variety of products and comforts faster and far cheaper than ever before.
Toyota 's success after using TPS brought worldwide attention to lean manufacturing concepts. With the introduction of lean manufacturing into the production process, the management was able to gauge the advantages lean manufacturing brought into the day to day activities when it was implemented for single production line. The benefit of single production line with duplicate resources is that idle equipment could be undergoing a setup for the next product while another product is running. This configuration mitigates flow line downtime that would result from a high product mix because it can drive the need for many different machine setup time iterations. A single line configuration would simplify production line leadership’s responsibilities, staffing level needs would be better understood, preventive maintenance could be done while products are running and this configuration would promote a balanced or equal use approach to equipment utilization.
Work was made cheaper because of mass production. It caused work to be cheaper
• There is a thought at company that new approach shall help the production of New Models and increase the product Quality. • But they also have a alternative thought that it may be difficult to change the Designs during Development Cycle.
Competitors – The industry that Nissan currently operates in provides lots of potential competitors for them as many automobile companies are developing electric cars which are something Nissan are very keen on focusing on. Nissan currently only run a small market share of the industry so many competitors are dominating the market such as Ford, Vauxhall etc. Nissans competitors have many strengths and weaknesses against Nissan. Some companies such as Ford focus heavily on fuel powered cars which means they will have an advantage against Nissans fuel powered range but Nissan will have an advantage over them with Nissans electric cars and the amount of research that has been put into it. Other companies such as Tesla whose main focus is electric cars are a fairly big competitor towards Nissan and the Nissan leaf range.
Geographic segmentation calls for dividing the market into different geographical units such as regions, cities, or neighborhood. Coca-Cola has a countrywide network of product distribution but the company segments more in urban and suburban areas as compared to rural areas. 1.2. Demographic segmentation In demographic segmentation, the market is divided into groups on the basis of variables such as age, family life cycle, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation, nationality, and social class. Demographic variables are the most popular base of Coca-Cola Company for distinguishing their customer groups.
The Business Level of Toyota Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese company that is involved in the design, assembly, manufacture and sale of a wide range of motor vehicles such as minivans, passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and assorted accessories and parts (Nkomo, 3). Examples of brands under the Toyota portfolio include, but are not limited to; Lexus, Toyota, Hino and Daihatsu. Toyota was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda and has grown to not only be the world’s leading auto manufacturer in the automotive industry, but also the world’s eighth largest company with operations in virtually every corner of the world (Nkomo, 3). This growth has been fueled by two key aspects of Toyota’s business; its ability to lower costs and concise
However, Toyota still sells more vehicles each year but the gap has narrowed down to less than 1.5 million cars. Though Toyotas reputation is going down after a series of recalls, low quality for Volkswagen remains an issue in the U.S market. Volkswagen needs to strengthen its market in the United States to expand its market share. Stefan Jacoby, VWs U.S chief persuaded the board to build a U.S plant. The board later approved the plant and allocated $1 billion for the construction of the plant scheduled to open in 2011.
The analysis will be made on a basis of combination with the pre-understanding of crisis management theory and the empirical data, by answering the three research questions respectively as follows: What are the reasons that force Toyota coming to the troublesome crisis? Crises pose certain risks to an company – potentially affecting critical aspects like reputation, image, brand equity, credibility, publicity, financial viability, legitimacy, community standing, etc. (Smudde, 2001). In auto industry vehicle recalls happen all the time and everywhere.
ACHIEVING GLOBAL COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF APPLE INC. Apple Inc. is an American conglomerate company located in one immeasurable loop, Cupertino, California in the middle of the Silicon Valley. (OPPapers, 2012). Apple is motivated on their designing, developing, innovating new products like the personal computers, other related software products, and the electronic products such as MP3 players and iPods. Apple Inc.’s main products are iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPads and its latest advanced product is iWatch, which is on the edge of creating another revolution after iPhone. Apple Inc. has transformed its image from an inventive computer manufacturer to a fully-fledged consumer 's electronic company.
New technologies in functionality and manufacturing processes are required to stay ahead of an ever changing market
McDonald’s is the world’s largest restaurant chain, serving a total of 69 million people a day at 34,000 restaurants worldwide. While facing a tough competition, McDonald’s has chosen to launch a new product to sustain competitive advantage as well as to attract customers in the ’18 to 32 years old’ range, which they have struggled with up to today. They launched the McWrap on April 1, invented by the 47 years old vice president and executive chef Dan Coudreaut. The McWrap is meant to be a healthier choice than the products McDonald’s are in general known for, as well as to compete with competitors such as Five Guys, Subway and Chipotle. However, people assimilate McDonald’s to junk food unlike the ”Subway buster”.
Growing customer expectations result in shorter life cycle of products and this means that companies should make their processes more and more flexible adopting modularity and product platforms in order to overcome competitors. Companies who fail to meet dynamic customer needs are doomed to fail. To illustrate this we can consider Tata Motors that designed a car selling at $2500 having identified the need for cheap vehicles and introduced market-pull innovation. Though having some negative feedbacks on its security it is affordable for many families in India.
The four building blocks of competitive advantage can be used to help a company become more profitable and stay ahead of their competition. The four factors are superior efficiency, quality, innovation, customer responsiveness. All four building blocks are important to any company. However, I believe that customer responsiveness is the most important because having loyal and happy customers can make or break any company. The four building blocks can help companies grow and become the leader in their industry over their rivals.
