Due in 12 hours

The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy

Organizations can take fair advantage over other competitors, improve their market strengths, weaknesses, and avoid making wrong business decisions. Conventionally, the Porter’s Five Competitive Forces (FCF) play a crucial role in identifying profitable products, services, and competitive advantages. The forces are the power of the suppliers, power of the buyers, threats of new entrants, threat of substitute products or services, and rivalry among competitors (Porter, 2008). Dominant suppliers control the market by influencing the quality and price of products and services. As I am pursuing a business career, one of my goals is to have unique quality products, services, and values, allowing me to be a dominant supplier.
Powerful buyers are also key influences within the industry as they can drive the price of a product or service down or up. Personally, the most important part of the FCF is being a strong supplier, whereby buyers have no doubt about the value of the products and services, and they have no choice but to patronize at the price established by my associates. In some cases, I will have discount programs in order to keep valued customers within the company.
New Entrants (NE) are likely to introduce competition, and they are considered a threat. Therefore, the goal is to ensure that there is quality and large scale production, one solid business strategy, and higher key technology production. Barriers that are durable and strong to NE will keep NE away from gaining my customers’ attention. Rivalry will always exist in the market place, and my focus will be to do what no other competitors can do, which is offering better services, quality products, discount programs, and competitive market advantages. Lastly, threats of substitute products or services should ensure that my products and services are advancing. Listening to customers’ feedback and expectations should be used to improve the quality and value of our products and services.

Three Takeaways from Last Week’s Lecture

During the previous lecture, I understood that leadership style is an important aspect of any business. A good leader should increase transparency and honesty within his or her organization, believe in the business purpose, and be open to getting feedback about leadership style. Furthermore, leaders should know their leadership style, their strengths and weakness, and a slogan that communicates their leadership style. A good leader should encourage feedback from his or her employees and/or customers, which is the route I plan on taking. Based on my trust, honesty, and transparency, employees and customers should be able to confide in me regarding any issues in my organization.
Having competent employees is a valuable intangible asset, which is of high significance for the overall business performance. Therefore, employing those techniques that boost the efficient utilization of skills will be essential for the overall success of the firm. The methods include providing Career training, as well as creating a working environment, which will nurture the growth of the skills and encourage their usage within the business context.

Finally, customers and sales representative lines are highly important in business. Often, customer representatives are the ones communicating with customers; and the other employees are secondary. That said, I want my customer representatives to be highly experienced, approachable, polite, and be able to understand the customers. Also, considering other customers’ interest, I would like my products to focus on different customer values. Representatives should be loyal to the organization. When customers are having a bad experience, representatives are the first to know, and this is where their loyalty and honesty come in play. I want to develop an environment conducive for to employees, peers, subordinates, and customers to confidently speak their minds.

Reference

Porter, M. E. (2008). The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy. Retrieved from https://secure.colostate.edu/ares/,DanaInfo=reserve.colostate.edu,SSL+ares.dll?Action =10&Type=10&Value=73374