Guide to Business Strategy and Competitive Analysis: From Market Leadership to Customer Loyalty

The world of business is competitive, and companies need to have solid strategies in order to achieve their objectives. The other companies in a similar area of business are called competitors, and a competitor that is especially challenging can be called a rival. The company with the highest percentage of customers in an area is called the market leader because it is ahead of all the other competitors. Sometimes the market leader dominates, corners, or monopolizes the market. This means it has an extremely large market share, percentage of customers in that market. For example, if 90% of cell phone owners have an iPhone, then Apple is dominating the cell phone market.

For a business to outperform its competitors, achieve more than its competitors, it needs to have a competitive advantage. That's a reason for a customer to buy from that specific business, and not another one. Some companies try to differentiate, make it clear that their products and services are different based on price. They might be able to streamline or optimize operations, make the operations as efficient as possible, in order to offer the lowest price on the market for that product. Another way to reduce the cost of production is for the company to use its bargaining power, ability to influence someone else to achieve a desired outcome, to negotiate lower prices from its suppliers. Prices also fall if a company can cut out the middleman, eliminate intermediaries from the supply chain. For example, a factory selling directly to customers, instead of selling to stores which then sell to customers.

Other businesses focus their strategy on developing state-of-the-art products, meaning products that are the most advanced in their category. These companies might invest heavily in innovation, bringing new ideas to market as quickly as possible. Their products won't be the cheapest, but the unique features provide a compelling, meaning powerful, able to convince someone, reason to buy. Another business strategy is to make relationships with customers a priority. Companies using this strategy will try to cultivate customer loyalty, encourage the customers to buy only from them, and create advocates, customers who will tell others about the products or services.

How can a business create and implement a strategy? This can be done by the leaders of the company, with the help of analysts or consultants who specialize in this area. The first step in analyzing a business is often to understand the current status of the company, and the vision it is hoping to achieve, meaning its long-term goal for its impact in the world. It's important to consider all the different stakeholders. Those are people who have an interest and are affected by the business, including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, etc. Next, the company must determine the objective for the project and decide what the deliverables will be. Deliverables are the items that must be completed in order for the strategic project to be considered a success.

The business might make sales forecasts, predictions of sales, or base its goals on benchmarks, statistics that are considered the standard. Then, the company must come up with a viable plan to reach those goals, meaning a plan that is able to be achieved successfully, not something impossible. Some of the possible actions that might need to be taken include, redesigning or re-engineering, changing the structure of their processes, adjusting their positioning. That's how the brand and its products are viewed as distinct from others. Looking for new distribution channels, ways of supplying and delivering the product, a more radical plan would involve changing the business model. That's the way the company creates value and makes money.

To discover if the plan is having the desired effect, the company can monitor KPIs, key performance indicators. These are statistics that show how well each part of the company is doing. They will vary from area to area. For example, a KPI for the sales department might be number of new customers. A KPI for a factory might be getting the number of defects below 1%. And a KPI for the IT department might involve increasing the speed of the computer systems. In the lesson text, there are links where you can learn more about different business analysis techniques. You've finished lesson 23. Try the quiz to practice what you've learned in this lesson.

That’s all from Xiao Wu at qicai.com, who collected this listening material about business English courses, speeches, meetings, negotiations, and phone conversations. Hopefully, you’ve gained something useful from it!