Business Strategy: Chapter 5

Proctor and Gamble announced that it would sell off or close down up to 100 of its brands. This is an example of which turnaround strategy used by successful companies?

selective product and market pruning

Rivals would find it difficult to challenge Atlas Door in the short run because of

strong customer loyalty

_____ firms build small-scale operations to meet the needs efficiently of particular customers

unscaled

Hardware chains such as Ace and True Value are losing market share to rivals such as Lowe's and Home Depot in spite of them using a focus strategy. Why?

Achieving parity on costs for specialty retailers is difficult

Which of the following is most often true of mature markets?

Advantages that cannot be duplicated by other competitors are difficult to achieve

Which of the following is a risk (or potential pitfall) of cost leadership?

Cost cutting in one area of the value chain might increase costs in another

Fortnite game designers purposefully add content to differentiate their products, enticing players to play more and longer on the game platform. Which value chain support activity are they leveraging?

Technology development

Barnes and Noble lost its market share in book retailing to Amazon. It tried to regain market share by offering a similar electronic reader, the Nook, to the Amazon Kindle series. This demonstrates that Barnes and Noble lacked

a sustainable competitive advantage

Which of the following is not a reason for the possible erosion of company competitive advantage?

company commitment to innovation

Andersen Windows lowered costs, enhanced quality and variety, and improved its response time to customers by

creating an integrated computer system of catalogs, products, orders, and manufacturing

Global logistics firms such as DHL Supply Chain and Global Forwarding or C. H. Robinson Worldwide compete using an overall cost leadership strategy in primary activities such as

effective layout of receiving dock operations.

Piecemeal productivity improvements during a turnaround typically do not involve

expansion of company product market scope.

An overall ________ position enables a firm to achieve above-average returns because it protects firms against powerful buyers

low-cost

In a given market, key technology no longer has patent protection, experience is not an advantage, and there is a growing need to compete on price. What stage of its life cycle is the market in?

maturity

Indochino uses sophisticated technology to improve the efficiency of its operations and boost its sales. It collects information on a(n) ________ basis on ________ trends to optimize the selections of cloth purchases and the promotions it offers on its website and in its stores

ongoing; sales

With experience, unit costs of production decline as ________ increases in most industries

output

Primark, a fashion retailer, has found a way to keep its cost structure lower than its rivals by leveraging streamlined logistics, a low marketing budget, and negotiating bargain prices from its suppliers. They are using a(n) ________ strategy

overall cost leadership

Primary value chain activities that involve the effective layout of receiving dock operations (inbound logistics) and support value chain activities that include expertise in process engineering (technology development) characterize which generic strategy?

overall cost leadership

Which type of competitive strategy is characterized by convincing rivals not to enter a price war, protection from customer pressure to lower prices, and the ability to better withstand cost increases from suppliers?

overall low-cost leadership

A turnaround strategy involves reversing performance decline and reinvigorating growth toward profitability. The firm should analyze the external and internal environments carefully. What will the internal analysis reveal?

potential action for reducing costs

A ________ can be defined as the total profits in an industry at all points along the industry value chain

profit pool

A differentiation strategy enables a business to address the five competitive forces by

providing protection against rivalry

In evaluating the sustainability of the Atlas Door competitive advantages over the long run, it is important to evaluate the ability of rivals to

quickly imitate its strategy