Integrating customer preferences and organisation strategy for resource allocation

Porter identifies high market share with cost leadership, citing GM as a successful practitioner of this strategy. However, GM became a market share leader in the American automobile industry due to a strategy of market segmentation, differentiation and a broad scope shaped during the 1920s. Porter argues that cost leadership and differentiation offer an equally viable path to competitive success. Nevertheless, a differentiation strategy based on superior quality compared to competition is more profitable than cost leadership strategy. It can lead a business to become a market share leader, and consequently even a low-cost leader. Research indicates that differentiation and cost leadership can co-exist. However, Porter insists that each generic strategy requires a different culture and a totally different philosophy. The problem is that Porter's generic strategies are too broad. It is not his logic that is flawed, but his basic premise that prescribes cost leadership strategy as the only route to market share leadership, and presents a narrow view of differentiation with a unique product—sold at a premium price—on the one hand, and a standard, or no-frills product on the other. Mintzburg (1988) says Porter's cost leadership strategy should be called differentiation: a strategy that is based on a lower price than that of the competition. He suggests that business strategy has two dimensions: differentiation and scope. Thus, setting scope aside, competitive strategy has only one component: differentiation. So, the key question is not whether to differentiate, but how? First, make customer-perceived quality as the foundation of competitive strategy because it is far more critical to long-term success than any other factor. Second, serve the middle class by competing in the mid-price segment, offering better quality than the competition at a somewhat higher price. It is this path that can lead to market share leadership—a strategy that can be both profitable—and sustainable.

In this paper we reported the inclusive design of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) for blind users, especially their use of remittance services. We examined our design guideline of the remittance operation for the users, based on the operations by voice instruction and/or the feedback using a handset. Then we implemented the prototype system under the guideline and evaluated it by an experiment. Subjects were four blind men. The results showed that the system worked out effectively. However, the reduction in time for all operation required was indicated as a main problem.

In an organization, performance is affected by various factors. The performance of the cement industry in Kenya has been adversely affected by the challenge of inadequate employee training, inefficiency, not meeting the targets, inadequate employee development and reduced sales volume. Cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategies are used in enhancing the organizational performance. This current study was to determine the influence of competitive strategies on performance of selected Cement Companies in Kenya. The specific objectives were to examine the influence of cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy and focus strategy on performance of selected Cement Companies in Kenya. Theories guiding the study included; competitive advantage theory, resource based view theory, open systems theory and dynamic capability theory. The current study used descriptive research design. The unit of analysis was 6 Cement Companies in Kenya that included; Bamburi Cement Limited, Mombasa Cement Ltd (MCL), East Africa Portland Cement Company, Savannah Cement Limited ,ARM Cement Limited and National Cement Company . The observation unit was the employees working with these companies. Therefore, the target population was 744 employees. Stratified sampling method was used to group respondents into departments in order to ensure representativeness of all the cases. Simple random sampling method was used to select the respondents. Therefore, the sample size was 260 respondents which represented a 34.9% of the total population. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaire which was on the basis of drop and pick later method. Reliability and validity of research instrument was ascertained. Data was analyzed by using descriptive as well as inferential statistics. The study found that cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy and focus strategy had a positive significant effect on the performance of cement manufacturing companies. The study concluded that a firm following a cost leadership strategy offers products or services with acceptable quality and features to a broad set of customers at a low price. A differentiation strategy enables firm to create a product/service, which is considered unique in some aspect that the customer values because their needs are satisfied. Focus strategy allows cement companies to concentrate on promotional resources on the sectors that match their quality advantage. The study recommended that the cement companies should diagnose their changing cost of economics all the way from the raw materials stage to the final price paid by the ultimate consumer. Cement companies should exploit different ways to make the products and services unique. The management of cement companies should get to know management of their customers so that they can anticipate what customers want, how they want it, when they want it, and most importantly, how they can solve it for them. The current research would be of significance to the Cement Manufacturing companies’ leadership as it would help them in the management of the firms which would influence greater firms performance.

Today, in turbulent market environments and successive appearance of new competitors, one of the most important goals of industrial and business firms is first to keep their market share and then to increase it. They must find untapped markets or make them themselves therefore they have to know their competitive advantages. In 1980, M. Porter introduced three generic strategies. They have been concentrated to cost leadership, product differentiation and focus strategy. Nowadays many companies use Porter’s generic strategies pattern. The main challenge for companies is how to use Porter's generic strategies according to the internal and external factors of the company. This study presents a formulated framework for selection and prioritization of the best firms strategies based on Porter’s generic strategies. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive logical method for prioritization of the best strategies according to porter’s generic strategies then improving of SWOT analysis. This study tries to answer these questions: What is the method for improving selection and prioritization of strategies based on porter’s generic strategies? 2. How organizations can select the best strategies? How organizations can prioritize the selected strategies? How they can select and prioritize the best strategies of organization according to Porter’s generic strategies? In this study, we used SWOT analysis for selection of the strategies and prioritizing them by fuzzy PROMETHEE II method. This method uses Porter’s generic strategies as criterion. We used Shannon’s entropy to determine the importance weights of Porter’s generic strategies.

The abstract deals with the application of positioning strategies under the conditions of classical market structures. It is discovered that the assumptions of pure competition leave no space for M. Porter’s generic cost leadership and differentiation strategies to be applied. The enterprise’s actions, influencing five competitive forces and implementing generic strategies, are reasonable under the conditions of imperfect competition market structures. The game theory models, applied to oligopoly, indicate the close interaction of enterprises and interdependence of their strategic decisions: cost reduction and differentiation strategies not only increase the profit of the enterprise, implementing the strategy, but by affecting market price and residual demand decrease the competitor’s profit.

This research study explores the relationship between cultural and cybernetic control, cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, and corporate sustainability. Utilizing a quantitative methodology, data is collected from a diverse sample of companies representing different industries in Indonesia. Validated questionnaires are used to measure cultural control, cybernetic control, cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, and corporate sustainability performance. The collected data is analyzed using statistical techniques such as regression analysis or correlation tests to examine the connections between the variables. The findings of this study will enhance our understanding of how cultural and cybernetic control mechanisms, in conjunction with cost leadership and differentiation strategies, influence corporate sustainability. The outcomes will provide valuable insights and recommendations for organizations aiming to improve their sustainability practices and optimize their competitive strategies.

Generic Competitive Strategy: Basically, strategy is about two things: deciding where you want your business to go, and deciding how to get there. A more complete definition is based on competitive advantage, the object of most corporate strategy: “Competitive advantage grows out of value a firm is able to create for its buyers that exceeds the firm's cost of creating it. Value is what buyers are willing to pay, and superior value stems from offering lower prices than competitors for equivalent benefits or providing unique benefits that more than offset a higher price. There are two basic types of competitive advantage: cost leadership and differentiation.” Michael Porter Competitive strategies involve taking offensive or defensive actions to create a defendable position in the industry. Generic strategies can help the organization to cope with the five competitive forces in the industry and do better than other organization in the industry. Generic strategies include ‘overall cost leadership’, ‘differentiation’, and ‘focus’. Generally firms pursue only one of the above generic strategies. However some firms make an effort to pursue only one of the above generic strategies. However some firms make an effort to pursue more than one strategy at a time by bringing out a differentiated product at low cost. Though approaches like these are successful in short term, they are hardly sustainable in the long term. If firms try to maintain cost leadership as well as differentiation at the same time, they may fail to achieve either.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/bj.v1i1.5145 Banking Journal Vol.1(1) 2011: 63-74

The telecommunication industry has witnessed great increase in the level of competition since its privatization in Nigeria. A lot of works has centered on strategies to make business perform, especially those operating in competitive environments.. But not much has been done in the area of generic business strategy and organizational competitiveness. This study was aimed at examining if generic business strategy can serve as a driver of organizational competitiveness. The survey research design was adopted. Primary source of data was used with questionnaire designed in five points likert-scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Cost leadership, product differentiation and focus strategy were the indicators measured by this study. Data was analyzed using frequency tables and simple percentage method. Formulated hypotheses were tested using the Karl Pearson Product Moment Correlation techniques. Cost leadership and organizational competitiveness were found to be positively correlated (at 0.718), the study discovered that product differentiation and organizational competitiveness has high positive relationship (at 0.922), the researcher found out that the relationship between focus strategy and organizational competitiveness is (at 0.80.7) probability value. It was recommended that mobile telecommunication services providers should continue to take a lead of cost in an industry to achieve leverage over competitors, since cost leadership influences organizational competitiveness. In addition, product differentiation among other generic business strategies should be adopted because competitive leverage of an organization over other competitors to a great extent depends on it. Lastly, focus strategy can help organizations to achieve competitive leverage over other organization in the same industry.

Two types of strategy, namely cost leadership and differentiation strategy in their focused and broad applications have been used to coop with the changes in healthcare environment. Differentiation strategy is about the provision of a service or a product with distinctive attributes that are of added value to the patient. It is about meeting patient’s needs by providing patient centered care with state of the art technology and expertise. One accepted approach is improving the level of offering vis-a-vis the key success factors or improving the final or intermediate healthcare outcome measures by differentiating the existing services and or creating new ones. Cost leadership strategy on the other hand means to be the lowest cost producer in the industry. The competitive advantage is derived from widening the gap between the cost of production and what the patient is willing to pay. This entails minimization of cost in various operational fields, business restructuring and revamping of the overall cost structure. A basic approach is catalog activity and value chain analysis where each service is disintegrated into a set of activities and the corresponding cost drivers are analyzed in relation to the overall cost, to the customer’s need and market segment.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role performance measurement plays in the relationship between competitive strategies and firm performance.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted a mail‐survey of Thai listed companies in 2009. A total of 101 Thai listed companies’ executives, each representing their company, participated in this study. The SPSS version 11.5, path‐analytical model is adopted to analyze the survey data obtained.FindingsThis study finds that generally, all competitive strategies positively and significantly enhance firm performance through performance measurement. Specifically, firms’ differentiation strategy not only has a direct and significant impact on firm performance but also it has indirect and significant impact on firm performance through financial measures. Cost leadership strategy that firms pursue does not directly affect firm performance. However, it does so indirectly and significantly through financial performance measures.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research could consider the use of longitudinal data to ascertain more clearly these causal relationships.Practical implicationsThe paper offers managerial implications that whether a firm chooses to pursue cost leadership or differentiation strategies, a strong emphasis on performance measurement will ensure the positive impact on firm performance in a fierce competitive environment.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the existing theoretical discussion and analyses the research and findings on the mediating role of performance measurement on the relationship between competitive strategy and firm performance.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to express the strategic positioning of a firm among its rivals based on an overall analysis. The proposed model uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to determine the indexes due to cost leadership and differentiation. The model can be useful to identify the true cost leaders and those who are stuck in the middle. This work suggests the way how the strategic position can be explored from the consumption of resources (unlike the prevalent models like Banker et al., 2014). Design/methodology/approach Depending on the previous surveys, two inputs (spending per student and percentage of non-poor income group) and two outputs (average scores attained by students in science group and in language group in six private schools, located within the outskirt of Durgapur) were analyzed. Findings The classification made on the basis of the result of the proposed model reveals that out of the six schools (A, B, C, D, E and F), A, E and F occupy a strong position in this context, whereas B can be an example of stuck in the middle scenario. It not only has to reduce cost by 30 percent but also improve the differentiation index by 140 percent. C and D are lagging behind as they do not have enough differentiating qualities. Research limitations/implications Only six schools were taken for the analysis. Second, the input and output vectors had to be non-negative. In case of a negative input (output) set, separate treatment must be applied to them before the application of non-central PCA. Any decision-making unit producing an output of 0 will prohibit the use of the non-central PCA. Practical implications The extant study provides the indices to measure cost leadership and differentiation strategies for the classification as per the generic strategies. A firm which is lagging behind can adjust its consumption to remain successful. Social implications According to Hillman and Jenkner (2002), the developing countries lack the willingness of a primary school to impart education to children. The current study is used to explore whether any private primary school has the same goal or not. They also pointed out the possible future consequences while stating that the cost of educating children from the poorer section might be outweighed by the cost of not educating them and adults lacking basic skills had greater difficulty in finding well-paying jobs to escape poverty. So it is important to understand the role of a private primary school to offer seats to underprivileged students for educating them. The intention of six private primary schools toward educating the population of the small area within Durgapur is analyzed in this study, The study revealed that few schools spend more to serve the students belonging to upper classes to remain successful, whereas few schools as a differentiator make conscious attempts for providing services to poorer sections in an economical manner like a cost leader. Originality/value The extant research aims to formulate the determining methods of identifying strategic groups (proposed by Hunt, 1983) to make a parity between business definition view and strategic type concepts. The model can assess the rivals within an industry to explore the true cost leaders and those who are stuck in the middle using DEA. There are not enough kinds of literature which could effectively measure them.

Performance management and organizational strategy: How to design systems that meet the needs of confrontation strategy firms

The study sought to explore the impact of generic strategies on competitive advantage in the medical training colleges in Kenya. The research was guided by the Dynamic capabilities theory, Resource-Based View theory and Knowledge-based view theories. The target population was 183 members of staff in the 4 medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya. Data on 42 participants from the population was gathered from the top-level management, middle-level management and low-level management in these colleges using questionnaires. The research adopted a descriptive research design. Quantitative data analysis was conducted by use of descriptive statistics. Additionally, inferential statistical analysis on the observations was carried out. Qualitative data were analyzed by use of content analysis. Tables, bar graphs, and pie charts were employed for data presentation. The analyzed data revealed that cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategies positively contributed to the colleges’ competitive advantage with cost advantage having the greatest effect. The study recommends that colleges and other institutions employ the application of porter’s generic strategies since they have proved to be effective in contributing to competitive advantage.

The subject of the study is a typology of marketing competitive strategies for healthcare organizations operating in the healthcare market. The article describes general approaches to the formation of M. Porter's competitive strategies, on the basis of which groups of healthcare organizations are identified, in which it is possible to use basic competitive strategies – cost leadership, differentiation, focus. The author interpreted M. Porter's generic strategies for health care organizations on the basis of a study of the conceptualstructure of competition in the health care market and identified the main strategies based on three competitive advantages - quality of healthcare services, improvement of the process of creating healthcare services, differentiation of healthcare services. Criteria for organizing and grouping competitive marketing strategies for healthcare organizations are proposed: cost orientation, focus on service quality, consumer oriented. The developed classification is based on the study of different models of competition and considers the peculiarities of the medical field. Separately, the author focuses on comparing «Red ocean» and «Blue ocean» strategies and examines the possibilities of introducing streamlined database technology (blockchain) in developing competitive strategies for health care organizations. The advantages of the combination of Blue ocean strategy and blockchain technology are substantiated in the article.