The company to use for subsequent tasks is Apple Inc.
Part I: Company Background
Introduce the company by providing a brief description of the company and identifying the industry the company operates within. Provide a brief description of the company’s current situation. Focus on its main market and any other information that lays the foundation for Part II (for example, its history, recent changes in the company’s internal operations, macro environmental factors that influence, etc.).
Part II: The Competitive Advantage
In the first sentence, identify what you believe to be the competitive advantage of this company. Describe why you believe this to be a competitive advantage and discuss how the competitive advantage is sustainable. Justify your assessment by identifying, based on a resource-based view of the firm, a minimum of 1 key internal tangible and 1 intangible resources or capabilities that support the competitive advantage. Discuss how the unique combination of resources and capabilities of the company come together to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
ALL SOURCES USED SHOULD BE PROVIDED IN PDF DOCUMENTS ALONG WITH THE FINISHED DOCUMENT. NO MORE THAN 1 WEBSITE CAN BE USED AS A SOURCE. NO E-BOOKS. ALL SOURCES SHOULD BE ACCESSIBLE. NO ABSTRACT TEXT IS ALLOWED FOR USE.
Non-requirement based information –
Competitive Advantage Information –
Competitive Advantage
Simply defined, a competitive advantage is the single characteristic that sets a company apart from its rivals and gives the company a significant and long-term edge in its market.
Because competitive advantage is developed over time and is meant to be sustainable, a company’s competitive advantage does not change easily or often. The advantage rarely resides in a single product, a particular customer base, or market share. Eventually, product features can be copied and customer bases erode. Market share wanes. A company must have some internal capability to continually meet the competitive and business environment challenges it faces.
Companies rarely have more than one competitive advantage. When you define the competitive advantage of a company, you are looking for the one thing that makes the company unique among its competitors. That ‘thing’ may not be tangible. In fact, the most effective competitive advantages are likely to be intangible (like a unique configuration of talented, skilled employees). Adding a new product that wows the market initially but is easily copied by competitors is not a competitive advantage.
However, the processes within a company, both tangible and intangible, that brings creative new products to the marketplace could be a competitive advantage. As you consider the competitive advantage of a company, you may identify several characteristics that make this company unique. If you can’t narrow the list to one characteristic, you probably have not really identified the true competitive advantage.
Sustainability of competitive advantage is absolutely required. Sustainability comes from internal resources and capabilities that support the competitive advantage. Once you’ve identified the internal resources and capabilities (using the Resource-Based view), you will use a process (called VRIS) to analyze the strength of these resources or capabilities that support the competitive advantage.
