The BUSINESS level strategy !

BUSINESS LEVEL STRATEGY

An organization's core competencies should be focused on satisfying customer needs or preferences in order to achieve above average returns. This is done through Business-level strategies. Business level strategies detail actions taken to provide value to customers and gain a competitive advantage by exploiting core competencies in specific, individual product or service markets. Business-level strategy is concerned with a firm's position in an industry, relative to competitors and to the five forces of competition. 

Customers are the foundation or essence of a organization's business-level strategies. Who will be served, what needs have to be met, and how those needs will be satisfied are determined by the senior management. 

Who are the customers? 

Demographic, geographic, lifestyle choices (tastes and values), personality traits, consumption patterns (usage rate and brand loyalty), industry characteristics, and organizational size. 

What are the goods and / or services that potential customers need? 

Knowing ones customers is very import in obtaining and sustaining a competitive advantage. Being able to successfully predict and satisfy future customer needs is important.

How to satisfy customer needs? 

Organizations must determine how to bundle resources and capabilities to form core competencies and then use these core competencies to satisfy customer needs by implementing value-crating strategies. 

Business-Level Strategies

There are four generic strategies that are used to help organizations establish a competitive advantage over industry rivals. Firms may also choose to compete across a broad market or a focused market.

1. Cost Leadership

Organizations compete for a wide customer based on price. Price is based on internal efficiency in order to have a margin that will sustain above average returns and cost to the customer so that customers will purchase your product / service. Works well when product / service is standardized, can have generic goods that are acceptable to many customers, and can offer the lowest price. Continuous efforts to lower costs relative to competitors is necessary in order to successfully be a cost leader. This can include:

• Building state of art efficient facilities (may make it costly for competition to imitate)
• Maintain tight control over production and overhead costs
• Minimize cost of sales, R&D, and service

Risks

• Technology
• Imitation
• Tunnel Vision

2. Differentiation

Value is provided to customers through unique features and characteristics of an organization's products rather than by the lowest price. This is done through high quality, features, high customer service, rapid product innovation, advanced technological features, image management, etc. (Some companies that follow this strategy: Rolex, Intel, Ralph Lauren) 

Create Value by:

• Lowering Buyers' Costs – Higher quality means less breakdowns, quicker response to problems.
• Raising Buyers' Performance – Buyer may improve performance, have higher level of enjoyment.
• Sustainability – Creating barriers by perceptions of uniqueness and reputation, creating high switching costs through differentiation and uniqueness.

Risks of Using a Differentiation Strategy

• Uniqueness
• Imitation
• Loss of Value

3. Focused Low Cost

Organizations not only compete on price, but also select a small segment of the market to provide goods and services to. For example a company that sells only to the U.S. government. 

4. Focused Differentiation 

Organizations not only compete based on differentation, but also select a small segment of the market to provide goods and services. 

Focused Strategies

Strategies that seek to serve the needs of a particular customer segment.

Companies that use focused strategies may be able serve the smaller segment (e.g. business travelers) better than competitors who have a wider base of customers. 

This is especially true when special needs make it difficult for industry-wide competitors to serve the needs of this group of customers. By serving a segment that was previously poorly segmented an organization has unique capability to serve niche.

Risks of Using Focused Strategies:

• Maybe out focused by competitors (even smaller segment)
• Segment may become of interest to broad market firm(s)

5. Using an Integrated Low-Cost / Differentiation Strategy

This new strategy may become more popular as global competition increases. Firms that use this strategy may see improvement in their ability to:

• Adaptability to environmental changes
• Learn new skills and technologies
• More effectively leverage core competencies across business units and products lines 

However, 

organizations that choose this strategy must be careful not to becoming stuck in the middle (not being able to manage successfully the five competitive forces and not achieve strategic competitiveness). They must be capable of consistently reducing costs while adding differentiated features.