Creating and Managing Competitive Advantage

Running head: CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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Executive Summary
The report focuses on creating and managing competitive advantage to sustain in the market.
This focuses on analysing the micro and macro environment that helps the organisation to
achieve the competitive advantage faster. The SWOT analysis of Whittaker Company helps
to handle the competitive market and advance in financial prospective. VRIO model helps to
analyse the distribution of resources internally and properly utilise the resources to achieve
more production with low cost for the company. The objective of this report is to demonstrate
the market status of Whittaker’s Chocolate Company so as to achieve more competitive
advantage in the economic market.

CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
2.0 Organisation background.....................................................................................................4
3.0 Macro Environment Analysis:.............................................................................................4
4.0 Micro environmental analysis..............................................................................................5
4.1 Industry key characteristics:.................................................................................................5
4.3 Environmental threats:.........................................................................................................7
4.4 Potential opportunities:........................................................................................................7
4.5 Critical industry success factors:..........................................................................................8
5.0 Internal environmental analysis...........................................................................................9
5.1 Competitive strength/s:........................................................................................................9
5.2 Degree of competitive strength/s:......................................................................................10
5.3 Organisational weaknesses:...............................................................................................11
5.4 Competitive gaps................................................................................................................12
6.0 Strategic choices.................................................................................................................13
7.0 Performance measurement framework..............................................................................14
7.1 Performance measure framework......................................................................................14
7.2 Provide managerial implications and limitations of the above framework........................15
8.0 Summary and conclusion...................................................................................................16
References................................................................................................................................17

CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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1.0 Introduction
Competitive advantage is the ability of the company to outperform existing rivals due
to its unique strategy of products and services. Competitive advantage are the conditions that
allows the company to generate more sales or greater profit margins. It is of two types-
comparative advantage and differential advantage. The comparative advantage is the aspect
of making an entity’s products and services more affordable for customers compared to other
rivalries. Differential advantage is the difference of products and services from its
competitor’s offerings (Barney, 2015). The Whittaker’s is known as the second largest
chocolate brand in New Zealand. The objective of the study is to identify and analyse the
problems related to high price and quality management approaches. To analyse the problem,
pestle and swot analysis of Whittaker’s chocolate company is used. This provides scope to
determine the problem quickly and frame the performance measures to gain competitive
advantage (David & David, 2013).

CREATING AND MANAGING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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2.0 Organisation background
Whittaker’s chocolate company is known as second largest chocolate company in
New Zealand. It was originated in 1896 by James Henry Whittaker. Previously Whittaker
was in a British confectionary in England. Then after he started to sell chocolates and built a
partnership with his two sons James and Ronald in 1913. In 1937, the company became a
limited company. Whittaker’s chocolate company is winner for four consecutive years. Its
market share is 38% with $400 million turnover. The sales units per $ is 2 million chocolate
bars per day ranges between $4 to $5. It has a high growth rate that is 25% high growth for
last 5 years. The target market is for 15-25 aged customers who are weight watchers, people
who are conscious more about own health and kids and chocolate lovers. The competitor of
Whittaker is Nestle and Cadbury. The products of Whittaker are destinations, artisans, blocks,
mini slabs, chunks, sante and many more. Future plan of Whittaker is to focus more on
quality. Scope for Whittaker in increasing the quality can have great impact on customers
buying behaviour (Dekoulou & Trivellas, 2014).
3.0 Macro Environment Analysis:
Macro environment is known as the external and uncontrollable factor that exists in
the economy considering as a whole and not focusing on a particular region. It include the
economic factors that influences organisation’s decision making process and affects the
overall performance and organisational strategies (Delery, & Roumpi, 2017).
The following is the pestle analysis of Whittaker which affect the chocolate industry-
a) Political- In the change of government policies that is from the labour party to the liberal
democrat have some influence on Whittaker’s operations. The tax imposition is another
political factor that determines Whittaker’s managing strategies on investing and payment to