Global Marketing and Measuring Competitive Advantage Essay

Global Marketing and Measuring Competitive Advantage - Essay Example Competitive advantage according to Michael Porter of Harvard Business School means that a company is performing better than rivals by engaging in different activities or performing similar activities in different ways. If a company continues to copy the competitors it is not possible to remain competitive for long. At the same time just doing something different does not ensure sustainable competitive advantage. Competitors are always at work and are drawn to new technologies and business techniques. According to Collier (n.d.) if a company is able to attract investment it has competitive advantage because this denotes a healthy stock price. Once capital starts flowing towards the company the competitive disadvantage starts disappearing. Companies often try to be unique in some resource to give them the competitive advantage. A SWOT analysis helps to determine its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This does not still determine whether a firm is competitive or has competitive advantage. Hence to determine the competitive advantage the resource must be unique and not easy to duplicate. It should be hard to copy and should be durable. It should definitely be superior and should be trumped by the different capabilities of the rivals. To remain competitive a firm needs to identify the weakness in its processes or resources. Identifying the weakness itself allows the firm to work towards overcoming the weakness. Drawing up a SWOT analysis helps the company to assess the overall situation and then take corrective steps like protection against threats or better utilization of its unique resources (Parbotek, n.d.). To determine whether a company has competitive cost advantage, analytical tools like value chain analysis and benchmarking are used. Value chain is a linked set of activities that add value to the activities performed internally. Value chain depends upon the strategy, the internal operations,