Exam 16: Strategic Elements of Competitive Advantage

Michael E.Porter,a leading theorist of competitive strategy,developed a five forces model to explain competition in an industry.List these forces and describe the impact of the threat of new entrants.

The town of Impruneta in the Italian province of Florence,is a source of high-quality terracotta;the high iron content of the area's clay means that the finished pieces can withstand temperatures as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit.Many artisan pieces are rolled by hand,including those imported in the United States by Seibert & Rice.This is an example of ________ resources available for competitive advantage of a business.

Which of the following is not one of the four arenas in which dynamic strategic interactions are played out in hypercompetitive industries?

"Hypercompetition" refers to companies that are successful and find sustainable competitive advantages.

Analyzed in terms of Porter's five forces model,online music file sharing services represent a threat to the music industry in the form of a substitute product.

Cost leadership is a sustainable source of competitive advantage only if no barriers exist that prevent competitors from achieving the same low costs.

An approach to competitive advantage that exploits weaknesses in competitors' narrow-focus strategies is called a ________ strategy.

Rivalry among firms refers to all the actions taken by firms in the industry to improve their position and gain advantage over each other.

Hundreds of small companies such as Martin-Logan and Mark Levinson compete in the high-end audiophile segment of the consumer electronics industry.If analyzed in terms of Porter's generic strategies framework,such companies might be said to be pursuing competitive advantage via:

Porter's four generic strategies for achieving competitive advantage are:

The characteristics of home demand for a firm's products or services include all of the following except:

If rivalry among firms forces companies to rationalize costs,it is a negative force.

When managers at Matsushita realized that cost advantages in TV production were often fleeting,they added quality and reliability advantages,thus establishing:

According to D'Aveni,in today's business environment,short product life cycles,short product design cycles,new technologies,and globalization undermine market stability;thereby an acceleration of competitive forces takes place.

"Few competitive advantages are long lasting." Justify this statement giving reasons.

The Rugman and D'Cruz's flagship model is evident in the strategies of all but one of the following businesses:

Which of the following is not identified by Porter as one of the five forces that explains competition in an industry?

The automobile industry has become fiercely competitive on a global basis.The initial success of foreign automakers in the United States was due to all of the following reasons except:

Intel's loose brick was:

The development of the MP3 file format for music was accompanied by the increased popularity of peer-to-peer (p-to-p)file swapping among music fans.