Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Figure 10.1 
Advantage-creating 
resources
Contribute to providing value
for customers
Sustainable
competitive
advantage
Are hard for
competitors to
acquire or imitate
Are unique to
the firm

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GENERIC ROUTES TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
In Chapter 6 , the ways of protecting resources from competitor copy, or isolating 
mechanisms, were discussed. These include enhancing causal ambiguity (making it hard 
for competitors to identify the underlying value-creating resources in the first place), build-
ing economic deterrence (making resource acquisition uneconomic), establishing legal 
protection (through patents and copyrights) and creating path dependency (the need to 
devote time and effort to the establishment and/or appropriation of resources). In the 
longer term, however, few resources can be effectively protected against all competitor 
attempts to imitate.
10.2 
Generic routes to competitive advantage 
As noted in Chapter 2 , Porter (1980) identified two main routes to creating a competitive 
advantage. These he termed cost leadership and differentiation. In examining how each can 
be achieved, Porter (1985) takes a systems approach, likening the operations of a company 
to a ‘value chain’ from the input of raw materials and other resources through to the final 
delivery to, and after-sales servicing of, the customer. (The value chain was discussed in the 
context of competitor analysis in Chapter 5 and was presented in Figure 5.5 .) 
Each of the activities within the value chain – the primary activities and the support functions – 
can be used to add value to the ultimate product or service. That added value, however, is typi-
cally in the form of lower cost or valued uniqueness. These options are shown in Figure 10.3 .