Strategic Management (MGMT 2301) : The Cost Leadership Strategy
Strategic Management (MGMT 2301) : The Cost Leadership Strategy
Strategic Management (MGMT 2301) : The Cost Leadership Strategy
Generic strategies The Cost Leadership Strategy Porter's generic strategies are ways of gaining competitive advantage that gets you the sale and takes it away from your competitors. There are two main ways of achieving this within a Cost Leadership strategy: Increasing profits by reducing costs, while charging industry-average prices. Increasing market share through charging lower prices, while still making a reasonable profit on each sale because you've reduced costs. Cost Leadership is about minimizing the cost to the organization of delivering products and services. The Cost Leadership strategy is exactly that it involves being the leader in terms of cost in your industry or market. Simply being amongst the lowest-cost producers is not good enough, as you leave yourself wide open to attack by other low cost producers who may undercut your prices and therefore block your attempts to increase market share. You therefore need to be confident that you can achieve and maintain the number one position before choosing the Cost Leadership route. Companies that are successful in achieving Cost Leadership usually have: Access to the capital needed to invest in technology that will bring costs down. Very efficient logistics. A low cost base (labor, materials, facilities), and a way of sustainably cutting costs below those of other competitors. The greatest risk in pursuing a Cost Leadership strategy is that these sources of cost reduction are not unique to you, and that other competitors copy your cost reduction strategies. This is why it's important to continuously find ways of reducing every cost. One successful way of doing this is by adopting the Japanese Kaizenphilosophy of "continuous improvement".
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Stars represent business units having large market share in a fast growing industry. They may generate cash but because of fast growing market, stars require huge investments to maintain their lead. Net cash flow is usually modest. SBUs located in this cell are attractive as they are located in a robust industry and these business units are highly competitive in the industry. If successful, a star will become a cash cow when the industry matures.
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