Competitive Strategy Management

Question: What is strategy? Answer: The market nowadays are well engulfed with various business organizations which more or less operate in the same line of service or products. Thus, in this cut throat situation it is really important for a business organization to have a proper set of strategies so that it could have an advantage over the other rivals of the business. The strategy of an organization is not the goal that they are trying to achieve but it is the path and techniques by which these laid goals can be accomplished (Business strategy series, 2008). A company or organization must be well aware of the sector or niche it is intending to operate or is operating, without proper understanding of the environment it is hard to chalk out any strategy. Additionally, the organization must also be aware of the X factor they have over the other competitors in the market. A company should offer something different than mostly being served in the trade which would give the customers to check out the service or product of that particular organization. Knowing the unique point of the organization wont just help but it should also looked into that what are the resources the company has in its disposal and which are perfect to be used for that particular situation (House, 2004). And, finally the organization must well know how to sustain these resources and capabilities which would help them in the long run and not just prove to be a one tome wonder. IKEA is that furniture company which has its outlet in most of the major cities around the world. It has established its uniqueness in delivering low end furniture which are famous among the young generation white population. Although with its craze IKEA has never got itself in manufacturing those furniture and has only restricted them in designing them. Most of the rival companies were not able to repeat this world wide success of IKEA as the total functioning process of it is unique and thus following it would mean re-ordering the total process which is literally impossible (Baraldi, 2008). IKEA is successful all throughout these years as they know their strengths and limitations which has helped them efficiently implement the strategies they have for the organizations betterment purpose. Figure 1: Business Model Innovation From the advent of the corporatization and innovation the business models and techniques are naturally changing and evolving. It is seen over the years that the competitive gain can only be reached when the business does something innovative to re-alter their business model (Bucherer, Eisert and Gassmann, 2012). These innovation in business techniques gives two type of leverage to the service or the product Adding to the customer value Decreasing the cost of the production. Whichever the two but these gives and added competitive advantage to the business prospect. It is seen that being innovative to the business model does not have to do anything to invention or things like that, it can also be learning from the pros and thus reordering and customizing the idea to set into the business model of company. The business model comprises of four steps which act as a pillar and thus gives support and leverage to the whole organization. An organization must be well aware of the target customer they are surging for which helps in determining most of the issues related to the trade (Brown, 2015). Than it is important what actually is being offered to these target customers and what are USPs the offered product or service have. The business model is also dependent on how the value proposition is created for the said product or service and what are the competitive advantage it is having. And the fourth cog is that the companys model should know how it can generate revenue from selling or offering its service or products. Figure 2: Most of the companies make the mistake of incorrect management decisions and organizational resistance and thus leads to the failure of the proposed innovation. Companies like Nokia and Kodak which was soaring high in success but had a steep downfall as they were not able to re-order or adjusted according to the need of the hour and thus failed miserably (Kashani and Howard, 1991). These organizations made the mistake of ignoring the need that their organization had during the high time. And when they started to adjust they implemented more than one innovation schemes which added air to the smoke. CAGE Framework International business relations not only help the companies of on its part but also help the economy of the country. If a country has surplus than what it is actually producing than trading those surplus product would help them earn extra but also boost up the countrys economic situation. Pankaj Ghemawat has come up with a new set of framework which according to him is the foundation of every international trade relation and success factor (Ghemawat, n.d.). The framework developed he calls it as CAGE where C stands for the cultural equality of the countries being engaged in the international trade, A stands for the administrative and political collaboration that those two countries are enjoying, G stands for the Geographic or the environment that business is operating the more the similarity the better are the results and the last part E stands for the Economic condition that the two countries engaged in international trade have in common. Figure 3: This is mainly applicable in the merchandizing trade as if the countries in question has cultural, administrative, geographic and economical similarity than the product made in one country has its need and implementation in the country similar to it as well (Miloloa, 2015). Cross border trade has been in existence from long ago and the similarities not only enhance it but also supports its engagement. The trade relation of U.S. and Canada is much better and greater than that of U.S. and Mexico only due to cause of the similarity the two countries of U.S. and Canada have among themselves. References Baraldi, E. (2008). Strategy in Industrial Networks: Experiences from IKEA.California Management Review, 50(4), pp.99-126. Brown, L. (2015). The Course Valuation Model and 10 Steps to Increase Course Value: The Business Communication Course.Journal of Education for Business, 90(6), pp.340-346. Bucherer, E., Eisert, U. and Gassmann, O. (2012). Towards Systematic Business Model Innovation: Lessons from Product Innovation Management.Creativity and Innovation Management, 21(2), pp.183-198. Business strategy series. (2008). [Bradford, England]: Emerald. Ghemawat, P. (n.d.). The Cross-Border Integration of Markets and International Business.SSRN Electronic Journal. House, D. (2004). People, power and profits: linking strategy to business growth.Handbook of Business Strategy, 5(1), pp.257-261. Kashani, K. and Howard, R. (1991). Nokia data: A case study on European expansion.European Management Journal, 9(1), pp.46-59. Miloloa, H. (2015). Differences between Croatia and EU Candidate Countries: the CAGE Distance Framework.Business Systems Research Journal, 6(2).