Friday 14 March 2014

Porter's Generic Strategies and Ansoff's Matrix

Porter's Generic Strategies

A firm's relative position within its industry determines whether a firm's profitability is above or below the industry average. The fundamental basis of above average profitability in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage. There are two basic types of competitive advantage a firm can possess: low cost or differentiation. The two basic types of competitive advantage combined with the scope of activities for which a firm seeks to achieve them, lead to three generic strategies for achieving above average performance in an industry: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. The focus strategy has two variants, cost focus and differentiation focus.




Cost Leadership corresponds to the “no frills” experience, like the low-cost airline carriers, who choose the cost leadership strategy to achieve competitive advantage. Differentiation, on the other hand, corresponds to the luxury providers, like Rolls Royce or Ferrari or Gucci, Armani or Prada. These companies provide uniquely desirable products or services to their customers. Focus is about market segmentation by offering a specialized product or service in a niche market.

Porter later refined his model further subdividing the Focus strategy into two components: “Cost Focus” and “Differentiation Focus”.




1. Cost Leadership

In cost leadership, a firm sets out to become the low cost producer in its industry. The sources of cost advantage are varied and depend on the structure of the industry. They may include the pursuit of economies of scale, proprietary technology, preferential access to raw materials and other factors. A low cost producer must find and exploit all sources of cost advantage. if a firm can achieve and sustain overall cost leadership, then it will be an above average performer in its industry, provided it can command prices at or near the industry average.

2. Differentiation

In a differentiation strategy a firm seeks to be unique in its industry along some dimensions that are widely valued by buyers. It selects one or more attributes that many buyers in an industry perceive as important, and uniquely positions itself to meet those needs. It is rewarded for its uniqueness with a premium price.

3. Focus

The generic strategy of focus rests on the choice of a narrow competitive scope within an industry. The focuser selects a segment or group of segments in the industry and tailors its strategy to serving them to the exclusion of others.

The focus strategy has two variants.
(a) In cost focus a firm seeks a cost advantage in its target segment, while in (b) differentiation focus a firm seeks differentiation in its target segment. Both variants of the focus strategy rest on differences between a focuser's target segment and other segments in the industry. The target segments must either have buyers with unusual needs or else the production and delivery system that best serves the target segment must differ from that of other industry segments. Cost focus exploits differences in cost behaviour in some segments, while differentiation focus exploits the special needs of buyers in certain segments.



Ansoff Matrix



To portray alternative corporate growth strategies, Igor Ansoff presented a matrix that focused on the firm's present and potential products and markets (customers). By considering ways to grow via existing products and new products, and in existing markets and new markets, there are four possible product-market combinations. Ansoff's matrix is shown below:

Ansoff's matrix provides four different growth strategies:

Market Penetration - the firm seeks to achieve growth with existing products in their current market segments, aiming to increase its market share.

Market Development - the firm seeks growth by targeting its existing products to new market segments.

Product Development - the firms develops new products targeted to its existing market segments.

Diversification - the firm grows by diversifying into new businesses by developing new products for new markets.



Selecting a Product-Market Growth Strategy

The market penetration strategy is the least risky since it leverages many of the firm's existing resources and capabilities. In a growing market, simply maintaining market share will result in growth, and there may exist opportunities to increase market share if competitors reach capacity limits. However, market penetration has limits, and once the market approaches saturation another strategy must be pursued if the firm is to continue to grow.

Market development options include the pursuit of additional market segments or geographical regions. The development of new markets for the product may be a good strategy if the firm's core competencies are related more to the specific product than to its experience with a specific market segment. Because the firm is expanding into a new market, a market development strategy typically has more risk than a market penetration strategy.

A product development strategy may be appropriate if the firm's strengths are related to its specific customers rather than to the specific product itself. In this situation, it can leverage its strengths by developing a new product targeted to its existing customers. Similar to the case of new market development, new product development carries more risk than simply attempting to increase market share.

Diversification is the most risky of the four growth strategies since it requires both product and market development and may be outside the core competencies of the firm. In fact, this quadrant of the matrix has been referred to by some as the "suicide cell". However, diversification may be a reasonable choice if the high risk is compensated by the chance of a high rate of return. Other advantages of diversification include the potential to gain a foothold in an attractive industry and the reduction of overall business portfolio risk.

5 comments:

  1. Not having product and system integration expertise at this point in the development means that the MEMS product- and die-level designs will continue to evolve and harden in isolation. When external integration factors are finally considered several months or years later, there could be a serious mismatch between the die’s existing design and what the product actually needs to be in order to be useful for a specific end use application Rectifying the mismatch would require costly and time-consuming redesign; the worst-case scenario would be that you have spent time and money developing a product that the end user cannot implement or will not want. synonym for thought leadership

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  2. This is known as the “Known Good Die” (KGD ) problem. KGD compounds combinatorically, which means that overall product yield is a strong function of the number of die in the package and their individual yields. So, for example, if a package-level integrated system contains two die, each with 99% yield from their respective wafers, then the probability that the package integrated system will be good, when assembled from a blind pick of die, is (0.99 × 0.99) = 98%. The system-level yield drops quickly with increased number of die within a package and with decreased yield from the wafers. insurance thought leadership

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  5. How can the two models work together especially in a media marketing strategy? Is there a comparative way, strategists can jointly use Porter's generic model and Ansoff's model in their growth plan? Otherwise, this has simplified my understanding of the two!

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