MARK344 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Competitive Advantage, Product Differentiation, Flexible Response
Document Summary
These we classed as three main types: organisational culture; marketing assets; and marketing capabilities. Any organisation will be able to create a long list of its resources, but some of these will be more useful than others in creating competitive advantage. Contribution to creating customer value: the resources that contribute to these benefits create value for customers directly they are employed. Other resources may, how- ever, have an indirect impact on value for customers. Effective cost control systems, for exam- ple, are not valuable to customers in and of themselves. They only add value for customers when they translate into lower prices charged. Uniqueness or scarcity: where resources do contribute to customer value their uniqueness to the organisation also needs to be assessed. Some resources, e. g. distribution outlets used, may offer little differentiation from those available to competitors: those competence resources that are unique to the organisation have been termed distinctive competencies in contrast to core competencies by some commentators.
