The Pros And Cons Of Competitive Advantages

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INTRODUCTION
The research work is on competitive advantage, firm performance, value creation and its sustainability. The value of a product or service is the amount of money a particular customer is willing to pay for it (Finch 2008:78). Business performance centers on the use of simple outcome based financial indicators such as sales, growth, return on investment etc. (Yamin, Gunasekarau and Movando 1999:510). Competitive advantage of a firm is the edge that it has over its competitors (Altharti 2012).It is important to state that competitive advantage (CA) cannot be achieved without a business strategy or business model. It is the business strategy, which is the management game plan for creating value for stakeholders and earning a reasonable return on investment that gives a company a competitive advantage over rivals in terms of higher financial performance on revenue, return on investment etc.
The author accepts that Porter’s generic strategy and value chain are important tools in understanding the competitive strategies being deployed by rivals in any industry analysis. An understanding of the generic strategies such as the broad low cost provider, broad differentiation strategy, and narrow focus strategies on cost and differentiation being deployed by competitors can provide opportunities for existing and potential competitors by trying to achieve a lower cost or better differentiation by rivals. The value chain is an internal analysis of how an organization organizes