In identifying company resources with competitive value, it is important to understand that
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a group of linked and integrated resources and capabilities, when bundled together, can have important competitive power even when individual components of the bundle, taken singly, do not
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Which one of the following is not something that can be learned from doing a competitive strength assessment
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Which of the rated competitors are employing offensive strategies and which are employing defensive strategies
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According to the illustration in Table 4.3 and the accompanying discussion, the methodology for doing a weighted competitive strength entails
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determining the most telling measures of competitive strangth or weakness (which usually include most of the industry's key success factors), assigning weights to these measures, rating each company's strength on each measure (often using a scale of 1 to 10), multiplying each company's strength rating by its respective weight, and summing the weighted scores to get an overall competitive strength score; the company with the highest weighted score is the competitively strongest and the company with the lowest weighted score is the weakest
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SWOT analysis is a powerful tool
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Sizing up a company's resource capabilities and deficiencies, its market opportunities and the external threats to its future well-being
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Which of the following is not a component of evaluating a company's collection of resources and capabilities, the competitiveness of its prices and internal operating costs, and its competitive strength versus rivals?
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Scanning the environment to determine a company's best and most profitable customers
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The market opportunities most relevant to a company are those that
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offer the best growth and profitability, can be pursued with its competitively strong resources and capabilities, and present the most potential for competitive advantage
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When a company performs an activity quite well and that activity is central to its strategy and competitiveness, it is said to have
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a core competence in performing that activity
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Benchmarking involves
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comparing how different companies perform various value chain activities and then making cross-company comparisons of the costs of these activities
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Which one of the following provides the most accurate picture of whether a company is cost competitive with its rivals?
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The costs of a company's internally performed activities, costs in the value chains of both the company's suppliers and forward channel allies and how all these costs compare against the costs that make up the value chain systems employed by rival firms
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A company weakness or competitive deficiency
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is something a company lacks or does poorly (in comparison to rivals) or a condition that puts it at a disadvantage in the marketplace
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Which of the following statements about a company's resources and capabilities is false?
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Companies in the top tier of their industry typically have at least two and sometimes as many as four distinctive competencies, plus a management team that has proven dynamic capability to periodically freshen ad renew the company's resource portfolio
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In a weighted competitive strength assessment, the sum of weights should add up to
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1.0
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Which one of the following statements is false when it comes to using value chain analysis to determine a company's cost competitiveness?
a. Evaluating a company's cost-competitiveness involves using what accountants call activity-based costing to determine the costs of performing each value chain activity.
b. A company's own internal costs are insufficient to assess whether its product offering and customer value proposition are competitive with those of rivals.
c. A company's cost-competitiveness depends not only on the costs of internally performed activities (its own value chain) but also on costs in the value chains of its suppliers and distribution channel allies.
d. Whether a company's costs are competitive with those of its close rivals depends on how the costs of its internally-performed value chain activities compare with the costs of the internally-performed value chain activities of its close rivals.
e. The combined costs of all the various primary and support activities comprising a company's value chain define the company's internal cost structure.
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d. Whether a company's costs are competitive with those of its close rivals depends on how the costs of its internally-performed value chain activities compare with the costs of the internally-performed value chain activities of its close rivals.
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Which one of the following is not an indicator of how well a company's current strategy is working?
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Whether the company has at least two core competencies, one distinctive competence, and a sustainable competitive advantage over its closest rivals
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A company's value chain
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Consists of two broad categories of activities: the primary activities that create customer value and the requisite support activities that facilitate and enhance the performance of the primary activities
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The three steps of SWOT analysis are
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1) identifying the company's internal strengths and weaknesses, its market opportunities, and the external threats to its future well-being
2) drawing conclusions from the SWOT listings about the company's overall business situation
3) translating these conclusions into strategic actions for improving the company's strategy and business prospects
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Which of the following is not a means of achieving cost savings in supplier-related value chain activities?
a. Collaborating closely with suppliers to identify mutual cost-saving opportunities
b. Integrating backward into the business of high-cost suppliers and making the item in-house instead of buying it from outsiders
c. Pressuring suppliers for more favorable prices
d. Shifting to a value chain system that eliminates the need for suppliers
e. Switching to lower-priced substitute inputs.
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d. Shifting to a value chain system that eliminates the need for suppliers
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Which of the following is not an example of a potential external threat to a company's future profitability?
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The company's lack of a well-known brand name
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Compiling a "worry list" that zeros in on exactly which strategic issues and problems company managers need to worry about and consider in crafting a strategy well-suited to the company's specific circumstances is an important analytical step because
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the "worry list" serves as an agenda of items that need to be addressed in crafting a set of strategic actions that fit the company's overall external and internal situation
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One option a company has for achieving competitive advantage is by out-managing rivals in
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performing value chain activities more efficiently and cost effectively, thereby gaining a low-cost advantage over rivals
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In a weighted competitive strength assessment, each strength measure is assigned an importance weight based on
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its perceived importance in determining the degree to which a company's competitive power in the marketplace is strong, average, or weak
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A potent tool for learning which companies are best at performing particular activities and then emulating their techniques to improve the cost and/or effectiveness of a company's own internal activities is
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benchmarking
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SWOT analysis is a powerful tool for
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Sizing up a company's resource capabilities and deficiencies, its market opportunities and the external threats to its future well-being
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Which of the following statements is not accurate as concerns the task of identifying the strategic issues and problems that management needs to address and try to resolve in deciding what upcoming strategic actions to take?
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Identifying the strategic issues and problems that the company faces is the first thing that company managers need to do before starting to analyze the company's external environment, resources, capabilities, and overall competitiveness
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Which one of the following is not part of conducting a SWOT analysis?
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Determining whether the company's competitively important strengths are appropriately matched to the industry's key success factors
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Which of the following statements about company value chains is false?
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All a company has to do to determine whether it is cost-competitive with rivals is compare the costs of its internally-performed value chain activities with the costs of internal activities performed by its rivals
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A company that does a first-rate job of managing its value chain activities relative to competitors
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may be able to achieve competitive advantage either by performing its value chain activities more proficiently than rivals (thus gaining a differentiation-based competitive advantage) or by performing them more cheaply than rivals (thus achieving a cost-based competitive advantage)
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Which of the following is not an option for lowering the costs of distribution-related activities?
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Implementing an activity-based cost accounting system for all distribution-related activities and ceasing to perform all those distribution-related activities having unacceptably high costs
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Evaluating a company's collection of resources and capabilities, the competitiveness of its prices and internal operating costs, and its competitive strength versus rivals entails examining whether
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the company's present strategy is working well and whether the company is competitively stronger or weaker than key rivals
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Which of the following most accurately qualify as valuable company resources?
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State-of-the-art manufacturing plants and/or equipment and/or distribution facilities; the cumulative learning and know how of key personnel and work groups; cash and marketable securities; a strong balance sheet and credit rating; and a strong network of distributors and/or retail dealers
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Calculating weighted competitive strength scores for a company and comparing them against the weighted competitive strength scores of key competitors
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helps a company decide what offensive and defensive moves strategic moves to make -- which of its competitive strengths to exploit in winning business away from rivals and which competitive weaknesses to try to correct
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Which one of the following is not an example of a potential weakness or competitive deficiency that a company may have?
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A product offering that is not strongly differentiated from rivals
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The difference between a core competence and a distinctive competence is that
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a core competence is an activity that a company not only performs quite well but is central to its strategy and competitiveness; whereas a distinctive competence is a competitively relevant activity that a firm performs better than rival firms
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Two useful tools for determining whether a company's customer value proposition, prices, and costs are competitive are
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value chain analysis and benchmarking
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The external market opportunities most relevant to a company are those that
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can be pursued with its competitively strong resources and capabilities, offer the best prospects of growth and profitability, and present the most potential for achieving competitive advantage
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The competitive power of a company resource or capability does not hinge on which one of the following?
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Whether the resource or capability represents a technological asset or a marketing asset
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Which of the following is not pertinent in identifying a company's present strategy?
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The company's strategic intent and the moves it has made to build an attractive value chain
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Which of the following statements about company value chains is false?
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The activities that comprise a company's value chain reveal whether a company's resource strain are well-matched to the industry's key success factors
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Which of the following is not an options for lowering the costs of distribution-related activities?
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Implementing an activity-based cost accounting system for all distribution-related activities and ceasing to perform all those distribution-related activities having unacceptably high costs
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Which of the following is central to the task of identifying the strategy-related issues and problems that merit the front-burner attention of company managers?
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Compiling a "worry list" of "how to...," "whether to...," and "what to do about...,"- this worry list should be based, in part, on an assessment of the company's external environment and an evaluation of the company's own resources and ability to compete successfully
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Which of the following provides the most accurate picture of whether a company is cost competitive with its rivals?
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How the combined costs of a company's internally preformed activities performed by its suppliers, and the activities preformed by its forward channel allies compare against the costs of the supplier-preformed, internally-preformed, and forward channel ally-preformed value chain systems employed by rival firms
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