Exam 18: Creating Competitive Advantage

What is the primary focus of a customer- centered company?

Discuss customer intimacy.Why is it important? Provide an example of a company that successfully abides by this value discipline.

Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm yogurt company stated that "companies can do better with less advertising,less marketing research,more guerilla marketing,and more acting from the gut." At this point,Hirshberg was following which marketing strategy?

Approaches to marketing strategy and practice often pass through three stages: entrepreneurial marketing,formulated marketing,and strategic marketing.

involves first identifying and assessing competitors and then selecting which competitors to attack or avoid.

Strategies that strongly position the company against competitors and that give the company the strongest possible strategic advantage are _.

An industry often contains "good" competitors and "bad"competitors.Define each term and discuss scenarios with both "good" and "bad" competitors.How might "good" competitors choose to react to "bad" competition?

Most companies will compete with _ _ rather than _.

Michael Porter suggested four basic competitive positioning strategies that companies can follow,three winning strategies and one losing one.Name and describe these four different strategies.

Whereas the mass marketer achieves ,the nicher achieves _ .

Companies can identify competitors from a _ point of view by defining competitors as companies that are trying to satisfy the same customer need or build relationships with the same customer group.

Each competitor has a mix of objectives.The company wants to know the relative importance that a competitor places on all of the following EXCEPT _ _.

The more that one firm's strategy resembles another firm's strategy,the more likely the two firms are to .

A company can become so competitor centered that it loses its even more important focus on maintaining profitable customer relationships.

Approaches to marketing strategy and practice often pass through which of the three following stages?

Discuss the four evolving company orientations.Which orientation is considered most successful and why?

PepsiCo conducts a survey of Coca- Cola drinkers to assess the Pepsi's and Coke's strengths and weaknesses in product qualities valued by both company's target customers.PepsiCo is using a(n) .

Companies can identify _ _ from both the industry and market point of view.

According to management at hotel chain Ritz- Carlton,"It's all about providing a unique,personal,memorable experience" for guests.Ritz- Carlton most likely pursues which of the following strategies?

is profitable because the company knows the needs of the target customer segment better than other firms that casually attempt to sell to the same segment.