While there are different schools of thought about how strategy comes about, researchers generally agree that strategic focus is a common characteristic across successful organizations. Strategic focus is seen when an organization is very clear about its mission and vision and has a coherent, well-articulated strategy for achieving those. When a once high-flying firm encounters performance problems, it is not uncommon to hear business analysts say that the firm’s managers have lost focus on the customers or markets where they were once highly successful. For instance, Dell Computer’s strategy is highly focused around the efficient sale and manufacture of computers and computer peripheral devices. However, during the mid-2000s, Dell started branching out into other products such as digital cameras, DVD players, and flat-screen televisions. As a result, it lost focus on its core sales and manufacturing business, and its performance flagged. Although Dell lost its strategic focus, it was able to realize a tremendous turnaround: “We are executing on all points of our strategy to drive growth in every product category and in every part of the world,” said a press release from Michael Dell, chairman and CEO. “These results are early signs of our progress against our five strategic priorities. Through a continued focus, we expect to continue growing faster than the industry and increase our revenue, profitability and cash flow for greater shareholder value.”1Dell increases revenue and earnings, lowers operating expenses. (2008, May 28). Dell press release. Retrieved November 3, 2008, from http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2008/2008_05_29_rr_000?c=us&l=en’s=corp. Dell provides an excellent example of what is meant by strategic focus.
Porter’s Generic Strategies
Three of the most widely read books on competitive analysis in the 1980s were Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, and Competitive Advantage of Nations.2Porter, M. (1985). Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Free Press; Porter, M. (1989). Competitive advantage of nations. New York: Free Press. Porter, M. (1980). Competitive strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and companies. New York: Free Press, 1980; Porter, M. (2001, March). Strategy and the Internet. Harvard Business Review, pp. 63–78; Retrospective on Michael Porter’s Competitive strategy. (2002). Academy of Management Executive 16(2), 40–65. In his various books, Porter developed three generic strategies that, he argues, can be used singly or in combination to create a defendable position and to outperform competitors, whether they are within an industry or across nations. The strategies are:
- Overall cost leadership
- Differentiation
- Focus on a particular market niche.
These strategies are termed generic because they can be applied to any size or form of business. We refer to them as trade-off strategies because Porter argues that a firm must choose to embrace one strategy or risk not having a strategy at all.
Source: Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive Strategy. New York: Free Press.
Cost Leadership/Low Cost
Cost leadership is a low-cost, broad-based market strategy. When pursuing a cost-leadership strategy, a firm offers customers its product or service at a lower price than its rivals can. To achieve a competitive advantage over rivals in the industry, the successful cost leader tightly controls costs throughout its value chain activities. Supplier relationships are managed to guarantee the lowest prices for parts, manufacturing is conducted in the least expensive labor markets, and operations may be automated for maximum efficiency. A cost leader must spend as little as possible producing a product or providing a service so that it will still be profitable when selling that product or service at the lowest price. Because these firms focus on a large market, they must also be able to minimize costs in marketing and research and development (R&D). A low-cost leader can gain significant market share enabling it to procure a more powerful position relative to both suppliers and competitors. This strategy is particularly effective for organizations in industries where there is limited possibility of product differentiation and where buyers are very price sensitive. Walmart is the master of cost leadership, offering a wide variety of products at lower prices than competitors because it does not spend money on fancy stores, it extracts low prices from its suppliers, and its pays its employees relatively low wages.
Overall cost leadership is not without potential problems. Two or more firms competing for cost leadership may engage in price wars that drive profits to very low levels. Ideally, a firm using a cost-leader strategy will develop an advantage that others cannot easily copy. Cost leaders also must maintain their investment in state-of-the-art equipment or face the possible entry of more cost-effective competitors. Major changes in technology may drastically change production processes so that previous investments in production technology are no longer advantageous. Also, firms may become so concerned with maintaining low costs that they overlook needed changes in production or marketing.
The cost-leadership strategy may be more difficult in a dynamic environment because some of the expenses that firms may seek to minimize are research and development costs or marketing research costs—expenses the firm may need to incur to remain competitive.
Finally, it’s important to note that brand loyalty is especially hard to develop in a cost-leadership environment. The consumer’s loyalty often is to the lowest price, not the company providing the good or service at any given time. If another company finds a way to undercut a cost-leader competitor, consumers typically jump ship to where they can find the goods at a lower cost.
Focused Low-Cost
A cost-focus strategy is a low-cost, narrowly focused market strategy. Firms employing this strategy may focus on a particular buyer segment or a particular geographic segment and must locate a niche market that wants or needs an efficient product and is willing to forgo extras to pay a lower price for the product. A company’s costs can be reduced by providing little or no service, providing a low-cost method of distribution, or producing a no-frills product.
Differentiation
A differentiation strategy involves marketing a unique product to a broad-based market. Because this type of strategy involves a unique product, price is not the significant factor. In fact, consumers may be willing to pay a high price for a product that they perceive as different. The product difference may be based on product design, method of distribution, or any aspect of the product (other than price) that is significant to a broad group of consumers. A company choosing this strategy must develop and maintain a product perceived as different enough from the competitors’ products to warrant the asking price. Starbucks is a good example of a differentiator: it makes coffee, but its customers are willing to pay premium prices for a cup of Starbucks coffee because they value the restaurant atmosphere, customer service, product quality, and brand.
Several studies have shown that a differentiation strategy is more likely to generate higher profits than a cost-leadership strategy, because differentiation creates stronger entry barriers. However, a cost-leadership strategy is more likely to generate increases in market share.
Focused Differentiation
A differentiation-focus strategy is the marketing of a differentiated product to a narrow market, often involving a unique product and a unique market. This strategy is viable for a company that can convince consumers that its narrow focus allows it to provide better goods and services than its competitors. For example, Flux is a company that offers custom-made bindings for snowboards. Flux is a focus differentiator because it makes a specialized product that is valued by a small market of customers who are willing to pay premium prices for high-quality, customized snowboarding equipment.
Differentiation does not allow a firm to ignore costs; it makes a firm’s products less susceptible to cost pressures from competitors because customers see the product as unique and are willing to pay extra to have the product with the desirable features. Differentiation can be achieved through real product features or through advertising that causes the customer to perceive that the product is unique.
Differentiation may lead to customer brand loyalty and result in reduced price elasticity. Differentiation may also lead to higher profit margins and reduce the need to be a low-cost producer. Since customers see the product as different from competing products and they like the product features, customers are willing to pay a premium for these features. As long as the firm can increase the selling price by more than the marginal cost of adding the features, the profit margin is increased. Firms must be able to charge more for their differentiated product than it costs them to make it distinct, or else they may be better off making generic, undifferentiated products. Firms must remain sensitive to cost differences. They must carefully monitor the incremental costs of differentiating their product and make certain the difference is reflected in the price.
Firms pursuing a differentiation strategy are vulnerable to different competitive threats than firms pursuing a cost-leader strategy. Customers may sacrifice features, service, or image for cost savings. Price-sensitive customers may be willing to forgo desirable features in favor of a less costly alternative. This can be seen in the growth in popularity of store brands and private labels. Often, the same firms that produce name-brand products produce the private-label products. The two products may be physically identical, but stores are able to sell the private-label products for a lower price because very little money was put into advertising to differentiate the private-label product.
Imitation may also reduce the perceived differences between products when competitors copy product features. Thus, for firms to be able to recover the cost of marketing research or R&D, they may need to add a product feature that is not easily copied by a competitor.
A final risk for firms pursuing a differentiation strategy is changing consumer tastes. The feature that customers like and find attractive about a product this year may not make the product popular next year. Changes in customer tastes are especially obvious in the fashion industry. For example, although Ralph Lauren’s Polo has been a very successful brand of apparel, some younger consumers have shifted to H&M and other youth-oriented brands.
Straddling Positions or Stuck in the Middle?
Can forms of competitive advantage be combined? That is, can a firm straddle strategies so that it is simultaneously the low-cost leader and a differentiator? Porter asserts that a successful strategy requires a firm to stake out a market position aggressively and that different strategies involve distinctly different approaches to competing and operating the business. Trying to combine these two, Porter suggests, can lead to a firm being stuck in the middle. Some research suggests that straddling strategies is a recipe for below-average profitability compared to the industry. Porter also argues that straddling strategies is an indication that the firm’s managers have not made necessary choices about the business and its strategy. A straddling strategy may be especially dangerous for narrow scope firms that have been successful in the past, but then start neglecting their focus.
An organization pursuing a differentiation strategy seeks competitive advantage by offering products or services that are unique from those offered by rivals, either through design, brand image, technology, features, or customer service. Alternatively, an organization pursuing a cost-leadership strategy attempts to gain competitive advantage based on being the overall low-cost provider of a product or service. To be “all things to all people” can mean becoming “stuck in the middle” with no distinct competitive advantage. The difference between being “stuck in the middle” and successfully pursuing combination strategies merits discussion. Although Porter describes the dangers of not being successful in either cost control or differentiation, some firms have been able to succeed using combination strategies.
Research suggests that, in some cases, it is possible to be a cost leader while maintaining a differentiated product. Southwest Airlines has combined cost-cutting measures with differentiation. The company has been able to reduce costs by not assigning seating and by eliminating meals on its planes. It has also been able to promote in its advertising that its fares are so low that checked bags fly free, in contrast to the fees that competitors such as American and United charge for checked luggage. Southwest’s consistent low-fare strategy has attracted a significant number of passengers, allowing the airline to succeed.
Some industry environments may actually call for combination strategies. Trends suggest that executives operating in highly complex environments, such as health care, do not have the luxury of choosing exclusively one strategy over another. The hospital industry may represent such an environment, as hospitals must compete on a variety of fronts. Combination (more complicated) strategies are both feasible and necessary to compete successfully. For instance, reimbursement to diagnosis-related groups, and the continual lowering of reimbursement ceilings have forced hospitals to compete on the basis of cost. At the same time, many of them jockey for position with differentiation based on such features as technology and birthing rooms. Thus, many hospitals may need to adopt some form of hybrid strategy to compete successfully.3Walters, B. A., & Bhuian, S. (2004). Complexity absorption and performance: A structural analysis of acute-care hospitals. Journal of Management, 30, 97–121.
For a variety of reasons, including the differences between intended versus realized strategies discussed in an earlier section, none of these competitive strategies is guaranteed to achieve success. Some companies that have successfully implemented one of Porter’s generic strategies have found that they could not sustain the strategy.
Strategy as Discipline
While Michael Porter’s generic strategies were introduced in the 1980s and still dominate much of the dialogue about strategy and strategizing, a complementary approach was offered more recently by CSC Index consultants Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema. Their value disciplines model is quite similar to the three generic strategies from Porter (cost leadership, differentiation, focus). However, there is at least one major difference. According to the value disciplines model, no discipline may be neglected: threshold levels on the two disciplines that are not selected must be maintained. According to Porter, companies that act like this run a risk of getting “stuck in the middle.”
In their book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, they offered four rules that competing companies must obey with regard to strategy formulation:4Treacy, M., & Wiersema, F. (1997). The discipline of market leaders: Choose your customers, narrow your focus, dominate your market. Reading, M Addison-Wesley.
- Provide the best offer in the marketplace, by excelling in one specific dimension of value. Market leaders first develop a value proposition, one that is compelling and unmatched.
- Maintain threshold standards on other dimensions of value. You can’t allow performance in other dimensions to slip so much that it impairs the attractiveness of your company’s unmatched value.
- Dominate your market by improving the value year after year. When a company focuses all its assets, energies, and attention on delivering and improving one type of customer value, it can nearly always deliver better performance in that dimension than another company that divides its attention among more than one.
- Build a well-tuned operating model dedicated to delivering unmatched value. In a competitive marketplace, the customer value must be improved. This is the imperative of the market leader. The operating model is the key to raising and resetting customer expectation.
What Are Value Disciplines?
Treacy and Wiersema describe three generic value disciplines: operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy. As with Porter’s perspective about the importance of making trade-offs, any company must choose one of these value disciplines and consistently and vigorously act on it, as indicated by the four rules mentioned earlier.
Operational Excellence
Key characteristics of the strategy are superb operations and execution, often by providing a reasonable quality at a very low price, and task-oriented vision toward personnel. The focus is on efficiency, streamlined operations, supply chain management, no frills, and volume. Most large international corporations are operating according to this discipline. Measuring systems are important, as is extremely limited variation in product assortment.
Product Leadership
Firms that do this strategy well are very strong in innovation and brand marketing. Organization leaders demonstrate a recognition that the company’s current success and future prospects lie in its talented product design people and those who support them. The company operates in dynamic markets. The focus is on development, innovation, design, time to market, and high margins in a short time frame. Company cultures are flexible to encourage innovation. Structure also encourages innovation through small ad hoc working groups, an “experimentation is good” mind-set, and compensation systems that reward success.
Customer Intimacy
Companies pursuing this strategy excel in customer attention and customer service. They tailor their products and services to individual or almost individual customers. There is large variation in product assortment. The focus is on: customer relationship management (CRM), deliver products and services on time and above customer expectations, lifetime value concepts, reliability, being close to the customer. Decision authority is given to employees who are close to the customer. The operating principles of this value discipline include having a full range of services available to serve customers upon demand—this may involve running what the authors call a “hollow company,” where a variety of goods or services are available quickly through contract arrangements, rather than the supplier business having everything in stock all the time.
Only One Discipline
Treacy and Wiersema maintain that, because of the focus of management time and resources that is required, a firm can realistically choose only one of these three value disciplines in which to specialize. This logic is similar to Porter’s in that firms that mix different strategies run the risk of being “stuck in the middle.” Most companies, in fact, do not specialize in any of the three, and thus they realize only mediocre or average levels of achievement in each area.
The companies that do not make the hard choices associated with focus are in no sense market leaders. In today’s business environment of increased competition and the need more than ever before for competitive differentiation, their complacency will not lead to increased market share, sales, or profits.
Within the context of redesigning the operating model of a company to focus on a particular value discipline, Treacy and Wiersema discuss creating what they call “the cult of the customer.” This is a mind-set that is oriented toward putting the customer’s needs as a key priority throughout the company, at all levels. They also review some of the challenges involved in sustaining market leadership once it is attained (i.e., avoiding the natural complacency that tends to creep into an operation once dominance of the market is achieved).
Strategic Groups
When managers analyze their competitive environment and examine rivalry within their industry, they are not confronted by an infinite variety of competitors. Although there are millions of businesses of all sizes around the globe, a single business usually competes mainly against other businesses offering similar products or services and following the same generic competitive strategy.
Groups of businesses that follow similar strategies in the same industry are called strategic groups, and it is important that a manager know the other firms in their strategic group. Rivalry is fiercest within a strategic group, and the actions of one firm in a group will elicit responses from other group members, who don’t want to lose market share in the industry.
Take a look at the exhibit below – although all of the firms shown are in the retail industry, they don’t all compete directly against one another.
Although some cross competition can occur (for example, you could buy a Kate Spade wallet at Nordstrom), firms in different strategic groups tend to compete more with each other than against firms outside their group. Although Walmart and Neiman Marcus both offer a wide variety of products, the two firms do not cater to the same customers, and their managers do not lose sleep at night wondering what each might do next. On the other hand, a Walmart manager would be concerned with the products or prices offered at Target; if laundry detergent is on sale at Target, the Walmart manager might lose sales from customers who buy it at Target instead, and so the Walmart manager might respond to Target’s sale price by discounting the same detergent at Walmart.
Management 2020 text remixed from multiple sources under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. View a complete list of original sources.
