Understanding a company's capabilities is the key to a strong strategic marketing position', Anon

Résumé du document

The capacity to analyze the sources and methods of wealth creation in a company, is essential in an environment of rapid technological changes, and that which ensures a strong marketing position which allows gaining sustainable competitive advantage. It means that creation of wealth depends in large measure on internal technological, organizational and managerial processes inside the firm. Firm-specific capabilities can be a source of advantage in exploiting existing internal and external firm specific competences to address the changing environment. The concept of dynamic capabilities can be found by Schumpeter (1942), Penrose (1959), Nelson and Winter (1982) or Prahalad and Hamel (1990). Each author emphasizes on the development of management capabilities and difficult-to imitate combinations of organizational, functional and technological skills. An organization is a set of inter-dependent elements, which in turn are dependent on the external environment. Resources of a firm mean tangible assets such as production facilities, raw materials, financial resources, real estate; intangible assets which are for instance brand names, company reputation, technical knowledge, patents; and organizational capabilities such as skills or way of combining assets. For instance Dell computer built its growth by creating an organization capable of speed, with inexpensive manufacture and delivery of custom-built PCs. Dell subsequently revolutionized its own 'system' using the Internet to automate and customize services, creating a whole new level of organization capability. A competence means the way to obtain the best from the resources, to turn inputs into outputs. Due to this capability a firm can create a competitive advantage.

Extraits

[...] Next to a Resources Based view, companies must be able to have a Customer Based View. Indeed the basis of marketing and business is the creation and retention of profitable customers. A strong customer orientation across all aspects of the business is one of the most important elements of the marketing effectiveness. The customer considers the promises of one company in comparison with another one. According to this view there are three elements that the customer uses to make the comparison. [...]

[...] The most common tool to identify activities which provide value is the Value Chain analysis (Porter, 1985). It is the cost of these activities and the value they deliver in comparison with this cost that determines whether or not best value products or services are developed. Thanks to the Value Chain analysis, the manager is able to identify activities which provide value and those not. Activities which cost more than they provide value must be outsourced in order to perform the cost efficiency. [...]

[...] ‘Understanding a company's capabilities is the key to a strong strategic marketing position', Anon The capacity to analyse the sources and methods of wealth creation and capture in a company is essential in an environment of rapid technological changes. That ensures a strong marketing position which allows gaining sustainable competitive advantage. It means that creation of wealth depends in large measure on internal technological, organizational and managerial processes inside the firm (John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, 1997). Firm-specific capabilities can be source of advantage exploiting existing internal and external firm specific competences to address changing environment. [...]

[...] Moreover being attentive about its competitors and the way they respond to their customers' needs. Each company evolves in a specific industry and it must know the important features of it. In short term a company is set of internal and external aspects that interact and overlap. The challenge is to manage all these elements in order to ensure its future. Bibliography ADCOCK WILEY, Marketing Strategies for Competitive Advantage BATEMAN and SNELL, Management Building Competitive Advantage, International Edition th edition BOWMAN, Strategy in Practice, Prentice Hall Europe COLE, Strategic Management, Business Degree HOLLENSEN, Marketing Planning, A Global Perspective, Mc Graw Hill JOHNSON, SCHOLES, WHITTINGTON, Exploring Corporate Strategy, FT Prentice Hall, 7th edition PORTER, Competitive Advantage-Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Free Press Edition WILSON and GILLIGAN, Strategic Marketing Management, Planning, Implementation and Control, Elsevier, Third Edition. [...]

[...] Being valuable means being difficult to imitate, this is the strength, the essence itself of a core competency. For instance, the culture of Hewlett Packard is a source of advantage that cannot be transferred. In general, the physical resources are easy to imitate while the intangible resources as reputation, teamwork, culture are much more difficult to imitate. Obviously there is great difference between companies because each firm possesses a unique of resources (tangible, intangible assets and organisational capabilities to make use of them) (Pearce and Robisson). [...]