Principles of Competitive strategy fundamentals
                     Competitive strategy 
fundamentals
Introduction
The competitive strategy consists of the business 
approaches and initiatives undertaken by a company to 
attract customers and to deliver superior value to them 
through fulfilling their expectations as well as to strengthen 
its market position.
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Objective
The objective of competitive strategy is to win the 
customers’ hearts through satisfying their needs and finally 
to attain competitive advantage as well as out-compete the 
competitors (or rival companies.).
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How to sustain 
competitive advantage?
Since achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage is 
the primary aim of competitive strategies, managers should 
undertake measures to sustain competitive advantage once 
they are achieved.
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Measures
• Focusing on building blocks of competitive advantages.
• Developing distinctive competencies.
• Creating an environment of organizational learning.
• Instituting continuous improvement mechanism.
• Instituting best practices.
• Overcoming barriers to change.
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Focusing on building blocks 
of competitive advantages
• As stated earlier, a company has a sustained competitive 
advantage when it can maintain a higher than industry 
average profit rate over several years.
• This becomes possible when the company emphasizes the four 
generic building blocks of competitive advantage, such as;
• efficiency
• quality
• innovation
• customer responsiveness
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Developing distinctive 
competencies
• Distinctive competencies should be developed in all 
required areas – never in some areas at the cost of other 
important areas. Companies need to be balanced in their 
pursuit of distinctive competencies.
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Creating an environment 
of organizational learning
• Sustaining competitive advantage requires a congenial 
environment in the organization that promotes learning 
within the organization (commonly known as organization 
learning).
• Learning organizations can keep themselves at the top of 
all competitors because they are always in search of 
knowledge.
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Instituting continuous 
improvement mechanism
• Some organizations have been successful in their 
endeavor to improve quality through instituting total 
quality management (TQM) programs and business 
process reengineering.
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Instituting best 
practices
• The adoption of ‘industrial best practices’ helps in 
developing distinctive competencies and thereby 
sustaining competitive advantage.
• Organizations can benchmark (search out) the successful 
business-practices of other competitors/companies in 
other industries and then adopt them after necessary 
fine-tuning.
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Overcoming barriers 
to change
• Companies can overcome the barriers to change through 
providing effective leadership, necessary changes in 
organization structure, creating appropriate control 
systems and involving employees in decision making.
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