Exam 6: Strengthening a Companys Competitive Position

A) reinforces the brand,enhances consumer satisfaction,and results in lower prices to end users.
B) can result in better coordination of the firm's direct sales activity to wholesalers and distributors
C) can establish a retail frontal attack while efficiently managing its backward (defensive) sales orientation.
D) combines the best of all sales channels and provides financial support to distribution allies.
E) creates a channel conflict,thereby providing competitive improvisation.

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Strategic cooperation is a much-favored ...

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A) is nearly always a more attractive strategic option than merger and acquisition strategies.
B) carries the substantial risk of raising a company's costs.
C) carries the substantial risk of making a company overly dependent on its suppliers.
D) increases a company's risk exposure to changing technology and/or changing buyer preferences.
E) involves farming out certain value chain activities presently performed in-house to outside vendors.

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A) using a cost advantage to attack competitors on the basis of lower price or better product value.
B) using hit-and-run or guerrilla warfare tactics to grab sales and market share from complacent or distracted rivals.
C) launching a preemptive strike to secure an advantageous position that rivals are prevented or discouraged from duplicating.
D) pursuing continuous product innovation to draw sales and market share away from less innovative rivals.
E) initiating a market threat and counterattack simultaneously to effect a distraction.

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A) Expanding a company's geographic coverage
B) Gaining quick access to new technologies or complementary resources and capabilities
C) Leading the convergence of industries whose boundaries are being blurred by changing technologies and new market opportunities
D) Extending the company's business into new product categories
E) Suppressing a rival's breakthroughs in management or technology

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In order to capture the benefits of enga...

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A) tapered integration.
B) partial integration.
C) full integration.
D) forward integration.
E) backward integration.

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The most serious drawbacks to vertical i...

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A) Streamlines company operations in ways that improve organizational flexibility and cuts the time it takes to get new products into the marketplace
B) Allows a company to concentrate on its core business,leverage its key resources,and do even better what it already does best
C) Helps the company assemble diverse kinds of expertise speedily and efficiently
D) Enables a company to gain better access to end users and better market visibility
E) Improves a company's ability to innovate

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A) the costs of pioneering are much higher than being a follower and only negligible learning/experience curve benefits accrue to the pioneer.
B) rapid market evolution gives fast followers an opening to leapfrog the pioneer with next-generation products of their own.
C) the pioneer's products are somewhat primitive and do not live up to buyer expectations,allowing clever followers to win disenchanted buyers with better-performing products.
D) the marketplace is skeptical about the benefits of a new technology or product being pioneered by a first-mover.
E) the market response is strong and the pioneer gains a monopoly position that enables it to recover its investment.

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E

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Backward vertical integration can produc...

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A) increasing a company's ability to strongly differentiate its product and be successful with either a broad differentiation strategy or a focused differentiation strategy.
B) obtaining higher quality and/or cheaper components or services,improving a company's ability to innovate,and reducing its risk exposure.
C) speeding a company's entry into foreign markets.
D) permitting greater use of strategic alliances and collaborative partnerships.
E) giving a firm more direct control over the costs of value chain activities.

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B

A) are highly selective,focusing on particular value chain activities and on obtaining a particular competitive benefit.
B) are those whose purpose is to create an industry key success factor.
C) are those which help a company move quickly from one strategic group to another.
D) involve joining forces in R&D to develop new technologies,cheaper than a company could develop the technology on its own.
E) aim at raising an industry's barriers to entry.

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It is harder than one might think to generate cost savings or improve profitability by integrating backward into activities such as the manufacture of parts and components(which could otherwise be purchased from suppliers with specialized expertise in making the parts and components).For backward integration to be a cost-saving and profitable strategy,a company must be able to (1)achieve the same scale economies as outside suppliers and (2)match or beat suppliers' production efficiency with no drop off in quality.Neither outcome is easily achieved.To begin with,a company's in-house requirements are often too small to reach the optimum size for low-cost operation.Furthermore,matching the production efficiency of suppliers is fraught with problems when suppliers have considerable production experience,when the technology they employ has elements that are hard to master,and/or when substantial R&D expertise is required to develop next-version components or keep pace with advancing technology in components production.

A) focusing relentlessly on building a competitive advantage.
B) applying resources where rivals are least able to defend themselves.
C) using a strategic offense to allow the company to leverage its weaknesses to strengthen operating vulnerabilities.
D) employing the elements of surprise as opposed to doing what rivals expect and are prepared for.
E) displaying a strong bias for swift,decisive,and overwhelming actions to overpower rivals.

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Strategic alliances suffer from some dra...

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A) expanding supplier power.
B) facilitating the coordination of production flows and avoiding bottlenecks.
C) establishing the framework for operating.
D) creating control factors across the value chain.
E) accommodating shifting buyer preferences.

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A) that partners will not fully cooperate or share all they know,preferring instead to guard their most valuable information and protect their more valuable know-how.
B) becoming dependent on other companies for essential expertise and capabilities.
C) the added time and extra expenses associated with engaging in collaborative efforts.
D) having to compromise the company's own priorities and strategies in reaching agreements with partners.
E) the collaborative arrangements will not live up to expectations.

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