Exam 18: Creating Competitive Advantage

Refer to the scenario below to answer the following questions. Essentials is a rapidly growing brand of women's makeup, perfumes, and nail care products. The company has established itself as a high-end cosmetic product available at most national drug stores. In the past, almost all of the advertising for Essentials has been in women's fashion magazines. Essentials is now launching a new line of skin care products, ranging from facial cleansers to body lotion. These products are designed to be marketed to a broader audience, so the marketing team is exploring the effectiveness of different promotional mixes. -Essentials emailed a survey to a group of its most frequent,high-volume customers.The survey asked what makeup and skin care characteristics were most important to consumers.The Essentials marketing staff than ranked the performance of Essentials products in each of these categories.Essentials was conducting a(n)________.

Which of the following are market challenger strategies?

Marketing managers need a deep understanding of a given competitor's mentality if they want to anticipate how the competitor will act or react.Discuss the different ways competitors act or react.Why do they do so? Use examples to support your thoughts.

Explain how a market follower can gain advantage from a market leader.

Although competition is most intense within a strategic group,explain why there is also rivalry among groups.Give examples.

Michael Porter suggested four basic competitive positioning strategies that companies can follow,three winning strategies and one losing one.Name and describe these four different strategies.

Explain how the Encyclopædia Britannica has had "competitor myopia."

Apple's iTunes Music Store is a good competitor,one that plays by its own rules at the expense of the industry as a whole.

The competitive intelligence system of a company supplies key information to relevant decision makers about the company's competitors.

A company is guilty of ________ if the company forgets latent competitors and only focuses on current competitors.

An industry often contains "good" competitors and "bad" competitors.Define each term and discuss scenarios with both "good" and "bad" competitors.How might "good" competitors choose to react to "bad" competition?

A company can become so competitor centered that it loses its even more important focus on maintaining profitable customer relationships.

Describe what a strategic group is,name a few companies that belong to the same strategic group,and discuss why they are in the same group.

Fifty percent of the market is in the hands of Company A.Another 30 percent is in the hands of Company B.Fifteen percent is in the hands of Company C,and the remaining five percent is in the hands of Company D.Based on these hypothetical numbers,Company B is the market ________.

The purpose of ________ is to determine the benefits that targeted customers value and how customers rate the relative value of various competitors' offers.

Discuss the four evolving company orientations.Which orientation is considered most successful and why?

FedEx is rare because it excels at more than one value discipline.

The market follower must keep its manufacturing costs and prices ________ or its product quality and services ________.

If a company's aim is to make its own and competing products obsolete and serve customers who want state-of-the-art products and services,it is using a value discipline called ________.

The ________ usually leads the other firms in price changes,new product introductions,distribution coverage,and promotion spending.