Exam 7: A : The Sources and Dimensions of Competitive Advantage

Strategic innovation comprises the introduction of novel products or processes that embody new technology

The principal distinction between segmentation and differentiation is that segmentation is a strategic choice by a firm while differentiation is a feature of market structure.

Competitive advantage can be defined as:

In highly concentrated industries such as passenger jet aircraft,microprocessors,construction equipment,and video game consoles,the scale economies in production are more important than scake economies in product developmnet.

The cost reductions that firms derive from moving down their experience curves are mainly the result of learning which increases the productivity of labor.

In retailing,the cost advantages of large retail chains (such as Wal-Mart in the US,Tesco in Britain,Metro in Germany,and Carrefour in France)is primarily the result of:

Product integrity refers to the consistency of a firm's differentiation across all differentiated features - it is the balance of the overall impression left on most customers' minds

If the prices of securities fully reflect all the information available,then passive investors are best advised to invest in index-based mutual funds (unit trusts)with the lowest administration costs.

29,Commodity products lack the potential for differentiation: competitive strategy is limited to exploiting the sources of cost advantage.

Kim and Mauborgne's "strategy canvas" is a tool for identifying novel recombinations of product attributes.

A contrarian strategy-doing the opposite to what the majority of other market participants are doing-is likely to generate superior returns in markets subject to systematic behavioral trends.

Achieving a differentiation means making your offering unique in a way that makes it more valuable to customers,irrespective of the costs of creating that differentiation.

Causal ambiguity is a type of isolating mechanism.

"Experience goods" are those which:

One reason that the value chain analysis is a valuable tool for cost analysis is that cost drivers tend to be very different between the different activities of the firm.

According to Porter,cost leadership and differentiation are:

Compared with simple products like flour or toilet paper,complex products such as cars or hotels:

11,Between July 2012 and August 2014,Uber launched in 42 countires outside the US.The speed of this global rollout may be viewed as an attempt to pre-empt the market for ride-sharing services.