Competitive advantages are situation that puts a company in an advantage business position.
Competitive advantages can be gain by many strategies. However, the main strategies that can
gain Competitive advantages are cost strategy, differential strategy and focus strategy. Cost
strategy play a vital role as consumers are always looking for affordable goods and services for
better price. Cost strategy is when a business is able to produce the similar product or service
for lower cost than competitors in the market. For example, oil change for car. Walmart offers
the basic oil change for $50 and fast lube offers it for $39. Fast lube has a competitive
advantage that attracts more customers than Walmart. Differential strategy is when product or
services are different than competitors. Consumers are constantly looking for better product or
services. Offering the new invention puts a company in a differential competitive advantage.
For example, shoe business. Almost everyone has a pair of shoes that are from brand name like
Nike, Adidas etc. However, a company name Allbirds introduce the “most comfortable shoes”
made out of merino wool, eucalyptus tree, and sugar cane. By offering shoes that are made of a
different material Allbirds gain competitive advantage of differential. Focus strategy is targeting
certain market rather than everyone. This strategy is used by smaller business as they do not
have resources to meet the requirement to target everyone. For focus strategy the example
that I like to use is Xfinity Mobile. Xfinity mobile is only offered in California certain region.
Xfinity mobile offers phones call and text services for $0 if no data use. If the consumer uses the
1GB of data on their cellphone they pay $13 and the price increases accordingly. Xfinity focus
only certain region instead of enrolling the services in the USA. This service gives Xfinity mobile
competitive advantage in focus.
Many operations strategies to regain competitive advantages. The first that company can work
on is continues development of new product or services. Company should always invest money
in research for new products or services. If the company does not change and offers same
services it loses it competitive advantage or may go bankrupt due to rivalry. We have seen
many companies disappear in past. For Example, Blockbuster stores. Blockbusters offered video
cassettes and they didn’t change with time and loose it’s all business to DVD players and online