The challenge in business strategy is finding a sustainable advantage over other organizations and products in the market. If we look at competitive advantage with examples, we find that it sets a business apart from the competition. Whether it’s money-back guarantees, home delivery options or short-notice childcare facilities, competitive advantage creates a favorable position for an organization in the market. If we take a look at competitive advantage with examples, we’ll find that it allows a business to produce quality services or affordable products, such as better user experience, intellectual property or high-level customer service.
Let’s look at competitive advantage with examples.
What Is Competitive Advantage?
Competitive Advantage Strategies
How To Construct A Competitive Advantage
Competitive Advantage Examples Of Companies
What Is Competitive Advantage?
Examples of competitive advantage show that it’s a feature that enables an organization to outperform the competition. A competitive advantage makes one brand’s goods and services appear superior when compared with rival products. Competitive advantage examples in real life show that it isn’t limited to businesses and can extend to individuals and even countries. It can help achieve superior margins and generate huge value for both the organization and its shareholders.
The examples of competitive advantage highlight these key characteristics:
- Competitive advantage makes products and services desirable over rival brands.
- We must be able to divide it into differential advantages and comparative advantages.
- Competitive advantage with examples proves that benefits of a product, target consumers and competitors have to be identified and not randomly decided.
- A product can offer competitive advantage only if it’s sustainable.
- Competitive advantage examples in real life tell us that it can be used by individuals to make advances in their career.
- It should be near impossible to duplicate, imitate or copy the advantage.
Organizations can successfully use competitive advantage to offer specialized services at high rates, especially if the market is unsaturated. Competitive advantage examples in real life can help individuals showcase special expertise in particular fields.
Competitive Advantage Strategies
We can see from competitive advantage examples of companies that organizations must rely on these three strategies to establish an advantage:
Cost Leadership
As several examples of competitive advantage show, the objective of a cost leadership strategy is to lower cost by producing in large volumes and leveraging economies of scale. An organization must utilize low production costs and economies of scale to prevent competitors from replicating the price model.
Differentiation
The differentiation strategy is adopted by an organization to make its products and services stand out. They either provide premium services with special provisions or provide quality products with unique features.
Focus
With the focus strategy an organization zooms in on a narrow segment of the market that they want to target. It has two variants:
- Differentiation focus, which stresses the uniqueness of a service or product
- Cost focus, which hinges on low production costs
Examples of competitive advantage illustrate that an organization can rely on one or more strategies to create an advantage over its competition. As long as it’s sustainable, the competition will find it extremely difficult to neutralize the advantage.
How To Construct A Competitive Advantage
By studying competitive advantage with examples, managers can think about how their product will benefit the customers and pinpoint its advantages in the market. Here are the key elements to construct a competitive advantage:
- Customer benefits must be identified and products must offer real value to generate interest.
- An organization must define and establish the portion of the market it’s targeting to lower production costs and focus on the key features of a product/service.
- Managers must understand the competitive landscape to establish differentiation.
A strong competitive advantage must be clear and simple, preferably unique and one that highlights the benefits it has for the customers.
Competitive Advantage Examples Of Companies
Let’s look at some competitive advantage examples of companies:
Walmart
One of the most popular competitive advantage example of companies is Walmart, which sells branded items at low costs. They rely on a cost leadership strategy to minimize spending and offer ‘everyday low prices’ by leveraging economies of scale. Low operational costs, low cost of outsourcing and minimum spending give them a competitive advantage in the industry.
Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton creates an advantage over competitors using differentiation and differentiation-cost strategy. A leader among competitive advantage examples of companies in the luxury market, they sell unique luxury products at premium rates that aren’t matched by the competitors.
India is one of the many examples of competitive advantage among nations. India was a cost leader that offered cheap labor. It has now shifted to differentiation by providing skilled technical workers with excellent command over English and other languages.
A competitive advantage should change over time. It has to be supported by ongoing market research and reflect the strength of a business. Managers can use competitive advantage examples in real life to analyze their own skills and use them to gain an edge over their peers.
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