Report on Business Level Strategy, Competitive Advantages, and Forces

This report analyzes business level strategies, focusing on competitive advantages and how companies like Airborne Express, Toyota, Verizon, and Amazon use them. It explores Porter's Five Forces model and how companies can achieve competitive advantage through superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and customer responsiveness. The report examines strategies such as cost leadership and differentiation, and how companies can utilize them. It also highlights the importance of top management in setting goals and allocating resources. The report uses case studies of Amazon's use of Kiva robots and Verizon's customer service and network performance to illustrate key concepts and provide real-world examples of successful strategic implementation. It also discusses how companies can integrate cost leadership and differentiation strategies. The report provides a comprehensive understanding of business level strategy and competitive advantage.

Running head: BUSINESS LEVEL STRATEGY
Business Level Strategy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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BUSINESS LEVEL STRATEGY
1.
Airborne Express has its main rivals in the mail industry as FedEx, UPS and many other
companies. Buyers bargaining power lead to delivery services for huge companies and
corporations. In case of bargaining power of suppliers, mainly the airport, aircraft and truck
maintenance has strong bargaining power. The result of Porters 5 forces model determines the
competitive strategy of offering low cost provider.
Airborne Express uses low pricing strategy to attract its customers with high quality
services. Therefore this shows that the company’s functional level strategy aligns with the
business level strategy of differentiation by offering services like door to door express, ocean
and air freight service, logistics and other value added services which turns out to become unique
among its competitors (Purce, 2014). While offering the low price to its customers prove out to
use the cost leadership strategy.
2.
The company Toyota had a very struggling past as well in present times. However, the
employees and the executives of the company had succeeded in adapting change each time to the
market and its competitors. After observing many cases and analyzing they had turned out to
become the best in the market. It also had tried to meet the customer’s needs and its stakeholders
to be prioritized in order to maintain good relations.
It faced the challenge to redesign its car designs and compete on a global platform by
creating quality products. Their competitive advantage is sustainable as far the employees
working with the company are innovative, effective and loyal towards their company objective.
3.

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BUSINESS LEVEL STRATEGY
Superior efficiency, quality, innovation and customer responsiveness are the four blocks
that lead to competitive advantages. These factors highly interrelated and according they affect
each other. For example, superior leads to innovation and which automatically can enhance
quality and customer responsiveness.
The top management plays a vital role while achieving superior efficiency, quality,
innovation and customer responsiveness, initially by communicating the importance of the set
objectives and goals to the employees and the organization. While creating these goals the top
management should identify the need for their demand and the way to complete the goals. They
need to allocate the resources and facilitate the cooperation within the organization.
4.
The porters five forces model consist of the threats of new entrants, bargaining power of
suppliers, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of buyers and the rivalry among the existing
competitors. At first, the rivals existing in the industry were all offering the same service at all
about same prices except the premium services.
However, the services were later offered by the television channels which made the soar
of profits in the video rental industry low, and similarly it affected the prices as well because the
demands of the video rentals adversely went down.
5.
The Verizon’s excellent customer handling service and the effective network
performance has become the resources of its strong competitive position in the wireless
telecommunications industry. Network coverage of almost 95% of the nation and with effective
network performance has met customer satisfaction. It also provides fewer dropped calls and fast

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BUSINESS LEVEL STRATEGY
downloads with high-speed data which has generated quality user experience. Hence, the
resources have improved quality for Verizon.
Verizon has 4g assets, subscribers database and network coverage as its valuable
resources and inimitable. Yes, Verizon is organized and managed in a way that allows it to
exploit these resources as the network coverage can be considered as well established by the
company that can be created as a sustainable competitive advantage.
6.
Amazon has purchased Kiva robots to service at the warehouses (Li & Liu, 2016). The
robots helped to improve the efficiency of the company by cutting the extra time which was
getting waste in the process of picking and packing products. By increasing their investments in
the network of distribution enable to deliver the product in less time and at low cost. This helped
to boost the customer responsiveness of the company by fulfilling its customer’s orders rapidly.
Product quality for Amazon means the important factor for its success in the global market.
Amazon has offered wide varieties of products at one place that also at lower price. It provides
with a user-friendly interface with product recommendations and reviews of the other customers
which will help to make the purchase easier.
Innovation for Amazon has favored the company to expand in the field of cloud
computing (Amazon, 2015). Initiating with a simple bookseller site, which later turn out to
become the largest online retailer in the world and later contributing to the invention of Kindle
digital reader. This way the company had improved its efficiency in each of the different fields
and boosting the customer responsiveness with its improved product quality.

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7.
Cost leadership strategy considers becoming the low cost producer in its existing
industry. On the other hand, differentiation strategy complies of a firm which seeks to be unique
among its competitors of the industry towards a dimension which is valued by its buyers (D.
Banker, Mashruwala & Tripathy, 2014). In cost strategy, it gives access to cost advantage of its
target segment while in differentiation the firm seeks to safeguard its unique value in its target
segments which helps it to grab the customers and gain a different advantage.
A company can use both the strategy simultaneously to gain the competitive advantage in
the market individually that also enjoying all the attention of the customers. However, there is a
risk appropriate to it as both the strategies are conflicting because differentiation is costly and
cost leadership focuses towards preceding differentiation and lowering its marketing overhead.
Therefore, a company can though employ both the strategy same time.

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BUSINESS LEVEL STRATEGY
Reference
Amazon, E. C. (2015). Amazon web services. Available in: http://aws. amazon.
com/es/ec2/(November 2012).
D. Banker, R., Mashruwala, R., & Tripathy, A. (2014). Does a differentiation strategy lead to
more sustainable financial performance than a cost leadership strategy?. Management
Decision, 52(5), 872-896.
Li, J. T., & Liu, H. J. (2016). Design Optimization of Amazon Robotics. Automation, Control
and Intelligent Systems, 4(2), 48-52.
Purce, J. (2014). The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management. New
Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.