Competitive Strategy Built on Strong Brands

Question: Discuss about the Competitive Strategy for Built on Strong Brands. Answer: What is strategy? There are certain things that a company or an organization desires and needs to achieve. These can be: The company needs to go for cost leadership strategy. The company should develop a global strategy The company must combine a set of regional acquisitions. There should strive for excellence in customer service. The company should always try to gain first mover advantage. The company should shift from defense to industrial application. In all these above statements, there are certain things in common, they are goals tactics, objectives and description of what a company or an organization would want to achieve to reach to the success. These statements are not strategies. The main word in all the discussion is Strategy. It will be used when a company would want to demonstrate its business acumen. Strategy is not what we aim to reach, it is the plan and footsteps that we follow to reach the aim. This eras businesses are not less than a war. Executives nowadays should strive to achieve triumph by adopting a set of complex strategies. A strategy can be considered as good if it answers four important questions. These questions are- Where does company or business compete? What distinctive value does company bring? What resources and capabilities does the company bring? How company plans to uphold its uniqueness? For example, the company IKEA, the company's choice of market place has offered a unique value. IKEA deals in inexpensive Scandinavian Designs. The goods of the company are designed for mass production. The company uses its own resources for its product's style and design, for manufacturing and shipping. It becomes difficult for the other competitors to imitate. They have to completely change how they design, manufacture, and ship their furniture. According to Henry Mintzberg "sometimes strategy is what you do." Dorf Clark industries ltd. manufactures different types of metal sanitary ware products. The company product can consists of showers, mixer taps, and many other bathroom accessories. Dorf Clark has its presence throughout Australia (GWA International, 2004). The company deals in the home ware products, specifically bathroom accessories. The market of the company covers most of the Australian Continent and it also exports its product in other parts of the world. The company ha s been there for 2 decades in the industry and is providing excellent services to the clients. The company differentiates itself from competitors by providing high quality products. For this company makes use of top quality raw materials and its signature craftsmanship (Dorf Clark, 2015). The company has the capability to launch new products and services and it has a great opportunity to reach the global markets. The constant increase in the income level and new markets pave good opportunities for the company to reach new heights of success. This can be done, if the company strategizes properly. The company can do this, if it utilizes its resource to the full of their capability. The company can use its own resources for designing and manufacturing of its products, which will make the product difficult to imitate. To reach the global market, it should start accepting and delivering orders to different cities and open its branches in different cities as well. Week4:Business Model Innovation Sometimes we hear in news that the companies that were once on a top have merged or have been acquired and some companies failed miserably despite of having a good access to technology and resources. The reason behind the downfall or falling of a company is that, they did not revised and revived their business model on time. In the race to success, they forgot to update their business model. The companies did not think about the radical innovation needed in the organization because they were too busy in managing and handling the current clients instead of envisioning the future opportunities. Innovation is required in all the industries. Innovation can increase the customer value in the product or services and can lower the cost as well. This creates a competitive advantage. But there are certain perceived misconceptions about Innovation. There are 3 myths that are commonly pervasive about innovation and they are - Innovation refers to ideas that no one has thought before. For getting big success, big resources are required. There is fascinating technologies behind every innovation breakthroughs. . A companys success is not guaranteed just by its new ideas or big resources or fascinating technology. The success of a company also depends upon its business model. 25 of the world largest companies did not just upgrade their technologies; they also updated their business model. What is a business model? A business model provides answers to the following four questions. Who is the target customer of the company? What do product/services of a company offer to the customer? How does a company build the value proposition? How does a company generate revenue? Most of the business models are adapted, refined or combined. There are almost 55 business model pattern that most of the companies use. Some of them are - Flat rate, Super market, Rent instead of buying, E- commerce or experience selling. There are basically four steps to follow to update a business model. First, Initiation- In this, we identify and analyze the current business model. Second, Ideation- During ideation, we confirm the current business model and develop the new a new business model. Third, Integration we check the consistency of the business model as it is important to see if the business model question fit into the newly adopted business model or not. Fourth, Implementation in a company implies the business model into the organization. The movie rental service was started by Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of Netflix in 1999. The company from starting has been using subscription based business model. The company initially provided a DVD-by-mail service wherein cli ent paid for membership and can rent DVDs (Netflix, 2015). Business model followed by Netflix in video-on-demand industry can be considered as classical business model because here users of the service and people paying for the service are the same entity. Netflix used streaming technology to provide entertainment content to consumers. It used subscription fee to generate revenue. Offer to the customer- Netflix previously offered rental DVDs and now it is the on the leading internet television network in the world. The company has 57 million stream members spread across 50 countries. The companys database includes wide variety of TV shows and movie, which also includes documentaries, original series, etc. (Tatiana, 2014). For streaming customers the main value proposition is availability of large database of movies to select from and the personalized service without advertisements. (Tatiana, 2014). The main source of revenue for Netflix is the subscription fees that it charges from the customer for providing access to unlimited TV shows and movies. At present, Netflix charges uniform price for services offered. It has been said that revenue that Netflix receives from customers is low. It is not sufficient to allow company to purchase new content in time to come. Some critiques have suggested that company needs to generate income through advertisement. However, Netflix is reluctant to do so. To cover the cost, company is planning to increase subscription fees. References GWA International, 2004. Built on strong brands. [Online] Available at: https://www.gwagroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/annual_reports/GWA_AR_200304_Frt.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2016]. GWA International, 2015. Dorf Quality Difference. [Online] Available at: https://www.dorf.com.au/dorf-quality-difference [Accessed 20 August 2016]. Netflix, 2015. Annual Report. Netflix. Tatiana, M., 2014. Netflix Business Model. [Online] Available at: https://www.cass.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/220517/Netflix.pdf [Accessed 19 August 2016].