How Innovation and Change Create Competitive Advantage

How Innovation and Change Create Competitive Advantage

Based on what you have categorized in your SWOT analysis, the second step is to write a summary conveying how innovation and change will create a competitive advantage with the development of the Camp Bow Wow Dog Park. Be sure to include how a Camp Bow Wow Dog Park can or will support the position strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategy (see text Positioning Strategies section 5-4b). You are preparing this summary to be presented at your first task force meeting that will guide the team of its goal and what potential impact to the Camp Bow Wow operation. (300 words)

STRENGTHS	WEAKNESSES	OPPORTUNITIES	THREATS
Existing Customer Base	Liability (Dog Bites)	No Existing Dog Parks in Market	PETA Concerns
Site Ownership		Unique Service	Zoning
Staffing Expenses		Complimentary Service	City Regulations
Innovative in Dog Boarding Model		Large Market of Dog Owners	Environmental Regulations
Customer Retention		New Revenue Source

Organizational strategy and innovation are critical for any venture or business project to be successful. Many strategies can help a business in attaining success. One strategy for ensuring business success is the SWOT analysis. Analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is essential for any business whose aim is to succeed. Considering Camp Bow Wow Dog Park, its strengths gives it a competitive advantage. One competitive advantage is differentiation. Differentiation is the ability of a business to provide unique services that are highly valued by their customers-services not provided by the competitors. Its ability to be innovative in the dog boarding model is an excellent way to be known in the market since people are interested in new and innovative things that they can use. Being innovative is unique and will help it maintain or retain customers in the community.

Cost leadership is another competitive advantage of Camp Bow Wow Dog Park. Cost leadership is actions whose aim is to deliver services and goods to customers at lower prices than their competitors without affecting the profitability of the business venture. It is achieved by reducing operational expenses. The business here owns the site. Therefore, many expenses that could have been used in paying for the site are saved, making running the operation of the camp cheap and easy. With the reduced expense, the camp can comfortably reduce the cost of the services without making losses.

Lastly, a focus strategy is an approach employed by businesses to focus on marketing, developing, and selling their products to a specific group of people or a niche. Focusing on a specific audience is critical for a business because it can direct its resources to a particular niche, easily maintain customers, and boost profits. Camp Bow Wow Camp has an existing customer base and the ability to retain customers, the business can best focus on one particular population and channel all its efforts in gaining a competitive advantage in this particular sector.

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Organizational Strategy and Innovation

Based on what you have categorized in your SWOT analysis, the second step is to write a summary conveying how innovation and change will create a competitive advantage with the development of the Camp Bow Wow Dog Park. Be sure to include how a Camp Bow Wow Dog Park can or will support the position strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategy (see text Positioning Strategies section 5-4b). You are preparing this summary to be presented at your first task force meeting that will guide the team of its goal and what potential impact to the Camp Bow Wow operation. (300 words)

Organizational Strategy and Innovation

In this assignment you’ll be developing the second section of the Camp Bow Wow Dog Park Summary Report that is based around the concepts of organizational strategy, innovation, and managing change.

Now that you have mapped out how you are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling your task force formation, the next step of the report is to convey how innovation, change, and organizational strategy will help create a competitive advantage with the development of the Camp Bow Wow Dog Park.

The first step of section II is to complete a hypothetical SWOT analysis by categorizing what you perceive to be the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of moving forward with a Camp Bow Wow Dog Park. Complete the following SWOT Matrix by categorizing the following factors in the appropriate row below:

Canine Epidemic	Large Market of Dog Owners	PETA Concerns
City Regulations	Liability (Dog Bites)	Profit Margins
Complementary Service	Maintenance Upkeep	Site Ownership
Customer Retention	Market Awareness	Zoning
Environmental Regulations	Marketing Costs	Weather/Seasonal Concerns
Existing Customer Base	New Revenue Source	Staff Training
Experience in Dog Park Business	No Existing Dog Parks in Market	Staffing Expenses
Innovative in Dog Boarding Model	Park Construction Cost	Unique Service

 

STRENGTHS	WEAKNESSES	OPPORTUNITIES	THREATS
Existing Customer Base	Liability (Dog Bites)	No Existing Dog Parks in Market	PETA Concerns
Site Ownership		Unique Service	Zoning
Staffing Expenses		Complementary Service	City Regulations
Innovative in Dog Boarding Model		Large Market of Dog Owners	Environmental Regulations
Customer Retention		New Revenue Source

5-4b  Positioning Strategies

After analyzing industry forces, the next step in industry-level strategy is to protect your company from the negative effects of industry-wide competition and to create a sustainable competitive advantage. According to Michael Porter, there are three positioning strategies: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.

Cost leadership means producing a product or service of acceptable quality at consistently lower production costs than competitors so that the firm can offer the product or service at the lowest price in the industry. Cost leadership protects companies from industry forces by deterring new entrants, who will have to match low costs and prices. Cost leadership also forces down the prices of substitute products and services, attracts bargain-seeking buyers, and increases bargaining power with suppliers, who have to keep their prices low if they want to do business with the cost leader.

Differentiation means making your product or service sufficiently different from competitors’ offerings so that customers are willing to pay a premium price for the extra value or performance that it provides. Differentiation protects companies from industry forces by reducing the threat of substitute products. It also protects companies by making it easier to retain customers and more difficult for new entrants trying to attract new customers. For example, starting prices of hybrid cars are $22,000 for a Toyota Prius, $26,000 for a Honda Civic, and $28,000 for a Ford Fusion. With these lower-priced options, why would anyone spend $40,000 on a Chevy Volt hybrid? Hopefully because the Volt’s innovative gas–electric hybrid goes 40 miles before the gas engine kicks in, making the Volt the most fuel-efficient car on the market.

With a focus strategy, a company uses either cost leadership or differentiation to produce a specialized product or service for a limited, specially targeted group of customers in a particular geographic region or market segment. Focus strategies typically work in market niches that competitors have overlooked or have difficulty serving. Axe began selling body spray in the United States in 2002. In just five short years, it grew into a $2.5 billion global brand and the dominant force in the men’s body spray market, with a 72 percent market share (58 points higher than its nearest competitor, Old Spice). Axe accomplished this with a relentless focus on its key demographic—men ages 20 to 25. It does not target its products or its marketing campaigns to a younger audience, and it does not try to follow its customers as they age to their late 20s and beyond. Accordingly, Axe’s products, campaigns, and marketing strategy are based on extensive research conducted in college towns and urban settings.