What is Competitive Advantage?
Competitive advantage is the act of a firm being in a more favorable position in the market that its rivals when it comes to operation. McGrath(2013) stated that competitive advantage can be displayed regarding having affordable products or services and having quality product or service. Quality of service or quality is one way to which a firm can beat rivals in endearing itself into customers. Customers prefer consuming the best quality in the market, and the firm with the best quality makes more sales. Affordability of a product or service is another way a firm creates a favorable position among consumers. Customers prefer to purchase an affordable product or service where the substitutes presented to them are of the same quality. A firm with competitive advantage has a higher number of sales from repeat and new customers. The high quality and affordability make customers keep purchasing the product as new customers are attracted to the business at the expense of rivals.
How do firms build competitive advantage?
According to Sanchez (2010), manufacturing equipment, machines, and processes are modern in a firm that has a competitive advantage. The equipment, machines, and processes are better than those of rivals. When machines, equipment, and processes are modern, it means that better quality of products or service will be offered. Better machines, equipment, and processes ensure that the firm can produce more efficiently than rivals.
2.Competitive Advantage – It includes the best product of an Organization in the competitive market.
Competitive advantage exists when a firm has strategy, product or an attribute that makes the firm capable of delivering similar benefit to that of competitors at a cheaper cost. Having competitive advantage is not enough the company should be capable of sustaining that particular competitive advantage for a longer period of time.
Competitive advantages are conditions that make a company to produce goods or services at a lower price or in a more desirable quality and taste for customers. MIFCO achieve the leadership in the market by offering the products in different varieties and a great taste. The company makes sure that the customers should get the best quality of products.
Competitive advantage – competitive advantage is the ability of one organization to outperform other organizations because it produces desired goods or services more efficiently and effectively than its competitors. The four building blocks of competitive advantage are superior efficiency, speed, flexibility, innovation, and responsiveness to customers.
To survive and thrive, an organization must create a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is a product or service that an organization’s customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor. Unfortunately, competitive advantages are typically temporary because competitors often seek ways to duplicate the competitive advantage. In turn, organizations must develop a strategy based on a new competitive advantage.
A Competitive Advantage is a peculiarity for an organization between it's competitors . It's achieved either by lowering prices or by greatening the value of the product or by offering luxury service and benefits to cope with high prices .
Competitive advantage is that a company has better ability in earning profit and profit growth compared to its competitors for the same group of customers in one industry.
Competitive advantage(CA) is an advantage competitors gain by providing or offering customers or consumers greater value for their money through product and service differentiation or through lower prices. Maintaining competitive advantage is crucial to many businesses or organizations' success in order to survive in the market. Competitive advantage is characterized by superior performance which could be an attribute to outperform the competitors whether current or potential; or gaining a higher market share in a particular industry thereby ensuring market leadership; or ultimately, maximization of profit.(JOBBER 2010)
Competitive Advantage is defined as possessing strong resources and capabilities that are super incumbent to those of its rivals where firm-specific assets resources could help in creating differentiation competitive advantages.
As previously stated, it is difficult to pinpoint a competitive advantage due to of the hyper competitive environment. Our strengths of the program are matched or exceeded by competitors. The areas we could potentially capitalize on are our academic rigor, our passionate staff in Southeast Online and the nursing department who provide excellent customer service, and the prevalence of nursing courses being taught by tenure track faculty. However, we aren’t the only program that has passionate staff, that teaches using tenured faculty, and are academically rigorous. The only way to provide leverage is if we are able to be the best in one of these area’s compared to our top regional competitors due to of the preference to attend within 100 miles from home. With all of our weaknesses and strengths identified, and considering that our students ranked helpfulness of staff higher than quality of the program, customer intimacy is our best chance of differentiating ourselves.
Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).
In order to achieve competitive advantage, a firm must perform one or more value-creating activity that is more superior compared to other competitors. Superior value is created through lower costs or superior benefits to the buyers.
“Competitive advantage literally is the ability to sustain profits that exceed the average for the industry through developing distinctive competencies: distinctive, because the competitors don’t have them and because they are fundamentally difficult to replicate” (Berry, 2012). Competitive advantage through people is critical for a business to succeed. Without people, businesses would lack the ability to have the innovations to differentiate their products or services from their contenders in the same field of interest. People are critical from in developing and producing the product or service for the company to drive customer satisfaction.
* A competitive advantage is one that distinguishes a firm or a business from the competitors in the minds of the customers. It also refers to the state or condition that make a business more successful than the businesses it is competing with, or a particular thing that makes it more successful such as having a higher sales through offering low or affordable goods and services.
the presence of competitors, the company provides a competitive advantage of the same benefits, but at a low cost (the merits and costs), or greater than the benefits of competing products (differentiation advantage) is shown. Thus, competitive advantage, higher profits and creates value for customers and good value.