Exam 18: Creating Competitive Advantage

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?

Most competitors in the music download industry see Apple's iTunes Music Store as a ________ because it created a closed system with mass appeal.

Cozy Country Market entered the candle business with a unique product: a line of candles made from soy that produces less smoke and lasts up to twice as long as other candles. The firm sold this unique product exclusively to a few niches. The candles were priced at twice the cost charged for normal candles. The product was also sold online and in unconventional outlets not dominated by market leaders. In this case, Cozy Country Market was using a(n) ________ against the market leaders.

In some markets, competitors live in relative harmony.

To plan effective marketing strategies, a company needs to find out all it can about its competitors. It must constantly compare its marketing strategies, products, prices, channels, and promotions with those of close competitors. This is an example of ________.

A company that pursues ________ will react much more strongly to a competitor's cost reducing manufacturing breakthrough than to the same competitor's advertising increase.

The existence of competitors in a market may cause a decrease in total demand.

The competitive intelligence system continuously collects information from the field through ________.

When companies watch both their buyers and their competitors, they are called ________ companies.

Many approaches to developing effective competitive marketing strategies exist. There may be ________ between the formulated side of marketing and the creative side, as creativity and passion help build and maintain success.

What is the LEAST relevant question to ask when assessing a firm's main competitor?

Walmart, Costco, and Southwest Airlines serve customers who want reliable, good-quality products or services that are also reasonable and easily available. These companies are all known for pursuing a value discipline known as ________.

In the context of identifying competitors' strategies, the more that one firm's strategy resembles another firm's strategy, the more likely the two firms are to ________.

Companies that pursue a clear strategy will likely perform well. Firms that do not pursue a clear strategy are called ________.

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

The goal of a "blue ocean strategy" is to make competition irrelevant.

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.

When Gary Hirshberg started the Stonyfield Farm yogurt company, he stated that his company could do better with less advertising, less marketing research, and more guerrilla marketing. He came up with innovative marketing ideas to promote his products such as having sales personnel dress up as large yogurt cartons to distribute free yogurt samples. Which of the following marketing strategies was being implemented by Hirshberg?

Kodak's film business didn't lose out to direct competitor Fujifilm; it lost out to Sony, Canon, and other digital camera makers, along with a host of digital image developers and online image sharing services. This is an example of ________.

Which of the following conditions would enable higher market share to produce higher profits?