Managing for Competitive Advantage

1.    Cost Competitiveness
2.    Quality
3.    Speed
4.    Innovation

Cost Competitiveness

Cost competitiveness is all about by keeping the price low by realizing the profits. If we find out most of the people have limited earnings. Keeping the cost low increases attractiveness of your product and people not feel hesitant to buy your products.
But keeping the cost low is not easy to manage for most of the companies. It is possible by managing resources, labor, manufacturing, and marketing.
Examples,
•    Dell computers are one of the best companies of the world dealing in computers they provide computers in affordable prices and deal online in the Internet.
•    Chinese products dominating the Asian market by keeping the price low of products.
•    Major company like Intel establish manufacturing plats to cheap labor countries like china, Pakistan , India  and Bangladesh by managing labor, manufacturing and minimize taxes  result in low cost of the product.
•    Southwest airlines gain success by keeping the cost low.

Quality

Quality is the excellence of a product, including such thing as attractiveness, lack if defects, reliability, and long term dependability.”
Quality is the success driver that most companies want to achieve. The quality of is always examine by customers if they satisfied with your products then you achieve the milestone of quality.
Quality is most important factor of success for the new entrants. Most of the companies in the starting focus on quality because it will help them to attract the customers and polishing their brand. Most companies improving their quality by TQM, Continuous Quality management and benchmarking.
Examples,
•    Dell computer maintain quality as well as they are cheaper than others.
•    Intel Corporation deals in many computer products like processors and motherboard and satisfies people by the performance, reliability of their products that’s why they capture computer hardware market.
•    AMD Corporation is not stable yet because in early stages they lack of quality in their products results in big loss.

Speed

“Fast and timely execution of the response.”
How fast you can develop and get a new product into the market? “How quickly you response to customer request “
It not about that to make the products faster only by manufacturing maximum number of units cant lead you to success. Speed means to know about the market condition to get the requirements and then deliver the product as soon as possible in the market. The companies have to exploit the opportunities and always look for new one. The timely response to the customer adds value to the company.
Examples,
•    Dell computer get specification of the computer form the user and deliver the it within 36 hours it because of they have good coordination with their supplier get the parts in 10 hours.
•    Pizza hut deliver each order in 15 minutes people don’t have to much, that why they are dominating..

Innovation

“Creation of new devices, objects, ideas, or procedures useful in accomplishing human objectives.”
The companies must capitalize the human assets by unlocking their expertise to get new ideas from supplier, employees, customers and other companies. The results of this process lead your company to dominate by producing new products and services to the customers. Company can’t depend on one product all the time if this is the case then competitors introduce so many new products and hold the major share of customers.
Examples,
•    P & G producing thousands of products each year because they are innovative they share they share the view of customers and introduce products what they want.
•    Nokia leading cell phone company dominating because they implement new ideas in their products and deliver continuously new products in the market for every class of customer