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Generic Competitive Advantage

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Generic Competitive Advantage
May 2, 2012

The Generic Competitive Strategies can be used as a business tool which helps strategists understand how the position of a company within its industry can be directly related to the strategy it employs. The strategy employed can then be analyzed to understand where a company's competitive advantage lies, with a view to maintaining it. Porter (1985). In the early 1980s the most widely read books on competitive analysis were written by Michael Porter. They consisted of Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, and Competitive Advantage of Nations. In his various books, Porter developed three generic strategies that, he argues, can be used singly or in combination to create a defendable position and to outperform competitors, whether they are within an industry or across nations. Porter states that the strategies are generic because they are applicable to a large variety of situations and contexts. According to Porter's Generic Strategies model, there are three basic strategic options available to organizations for gaining competitive advantage. These options are: Cost Leadership, Differentiation and Focus.
The Cost Leadership Strategy is a Strategy that is used by businesses to create a low cost of operation within their niche. The use of this strategy is to gain an advantage over competitors by reducing operation costs below that of others in the same industry. Inside Porter's generic strategies are ways of gaining competitive advantage. In other words, by using this strategy it helps in developing an "edge" that gets the sale and takes it away from the competitors. There are two main ways of achieving this within a Cost Leadership strategy: * Increasing profits by reducing costs, while charging industry-average prices. * Increasing market share through charging lower prices, while still making a reasonable

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