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60 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
The competitive moves and business approaches a company's management is using to grow the business, stake out a market position, attract and please customers, compete successfully, conduct operations and achieve organizational objectives is referred to as its
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Strategy
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The heart and soul of a company's strategy-making effort
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Involves coming up with moves and actions that produce a durable competitive edge over rivals
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A company achieves sustainable competitive advantage when
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An attractive number of buyers have a lasting preference for its products or services as compared to the offerings of competitors
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Which of the following is a frequently used strategic approach to setting a company apart from rivals and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage?
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Focusing on a narrow market niche and winning a competitive edge by doing a better job than rivals of serving the special needs and tastes of buyers comprising the niche
Outcompeting rivals on the basis of such differentiating features as higher quality, wider product selection, added performance, better service, more attractive styling, technological superiority or unusually good value for the money Developing expertise and resource strengths that give the company competitive capabilities that rivals can't easily imitate or trump with capabilities of their own Striving to be the industry's low-cost provider, thereby aiming for a cost-based competitive advantage |
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Changing circumstances and ongoing managerial efforts to improve the strategy
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Account for why a company's strategy evolves over time
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A company's strategy can be considered "ethical"
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If it does not entail actions or behaviors that cross the moral line from "can do" to "should not do" (because such actions are unsavory, unconscionable, injurious to others or unnecessarily harmful to the environment) and if it allows management to fulfill its ethical duties to all stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, the communities in which it operates and society at large)
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In endeavoring to craft an ethical strategy, company managers
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Have to go beyond what strategic actions and behaviors are legal and address whether all the various elements of the company's strategy can pass the test of moral scrutiny
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Management's story line for how and why the company's business approaches will generate revenues sufficient to cover costs and produce attractive profits and returns on investment
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Best describes what is meant by a company's business model
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Which one of the following questions can be used to test the merits of one strategy over another and distinguish a winning strategy from a mediocre or losing strategy?
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How well does the strategy fit the company's situation?
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The most trustworthy signs of a well-managed company are
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Good strategy-making combined with good strategy execution
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The strategy-making, strategy-executing process
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Embraces the tasks of developing a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy, implementing and executing the strategy and then monitoring developments and initiating corrective adjustments in light of experience, changing conditions, new ideas and new opportunities
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A company's strategic vision concerns
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A company's directional path and future product-market-customer-technology focus
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The defining characteristic of a well-conceived strategic vision is
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What it says about the company's future strategic course—"the direction we are headed and what our future product-market-customer-technology focus will be."
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Which of the following are characteristics of an effectively-worded strategic vision statement?
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Graphic, directional and focused
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Which of the following are common shortcomings of company vision statements?
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Too broad, vague or incomplete, bland/uninspiring, not distinctive and too reliant on superlatives
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A company's mission statement typically addresses which of the following questions?
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Who are we and what do we do?"
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The difference between a company's mission statement and the concept of a strategic vision is that
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A mission statement typically concerns a company's present business scope and purpose whereas a strategic vision sets forth "where we are going and why."
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Perhaps the most important benefit of a vivid, engaging and convincing strategic vision is
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Gaining wholehearted organizational support for the vision and uniting company personnel behind managerial efforts to get the company moving in the intended direction
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Company managers connect values to the chosen strategic vision by
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Making it clear that company personnel are expected to live up to the values in conducting the company's business and pursuing its strategic vision
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A set of "stretch" financial and strategic objectives
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Is an effective tool for avoiding ho-hum results
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A company's "macroenvironment" refers to
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All the relevant forces and factors outside a company's boundariesgeneral economic conditions, population demographics, societal values and lifestyles, technological factors, governmental legislation and regulation and closer to home, the industry and competitive arena in which it operates
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Which one of the following is not part of a company's macroenvironment?
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The company's resource strengths, resource weaknesses and competitive capabilities
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The state of competition in an industry is a function of
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The competitive pressures associated with the market maneuvering and jockeying for buyer patronage that goes on among rival firms in the industry
Competitive pressures coming from the attempts of companies in other industries attempting to win buyers over to their substitute products Competitive pressures associated with the threat of new entrants into the marketplace Competitive pressures associated with the bargaining power of suppliers and customers |
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The most powerful of the five competitive forces is usually
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The competitive pressures associated with the market maneuvering and jockeying for buyer patronage that goes on among rival sellers in the industry
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What makes the marketplace a competitive battlefield is
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The constant jockeying of industry members to strengthen their standing with buyers and win a competitive edge over rivals
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Which one of the following does not cause the rivalry among competing sellers to be weak?
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Low barriers to entry
Industry conditions that tempt rivals to use price cuts or other competitive weapons to boost unit sales |
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Rivalry among competing sellers grows in intensity when
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Buyer demand is growing slowly and the industry is composed of 6 to 10 competitors that are fairly equal in size and competitive capability
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Potential entrants are more likely to be deterred from actually entering an industry when
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Incumbent firms have previously been aggressive in defending their market positions against entry
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Competitive pressures stemming from the threat of entry are weaker when
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The industry outlook is risky or uncertain
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Which of the following is not a good example of a substitute product that triggers stronger competitive pressures?
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Coca-Cola as a substitute for Pepsi
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One important indicator of how well a company's present strategy is working is whether
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The company is achieving its financial and strategic objectives and whether it is an above-average industry performer
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Which one of the following is not a reliable measure of how well a company's current strategy is working?
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Whether it has a larger number of competitive assets than competitive liabilities and whether it has a superior quality product
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Identifying and assessing a company's resource strengths and weaknesses and its external opportunities and threats is called
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SWOT analysis
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The two most important parts of SWOT analysis are
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Drawing conclusions from the SWOT listings about the company's overall situation and translating these conclusions into strategic actions to better match the company's strategy to its resource strengths and market opportunities, correct the important weaknesses and defend against external threats
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The best example of a company strength is
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Having proven technological expertise and ability to churn out new and improved products on a regular basis
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When a company has real proficiency in performing a competitively important value chain activity, it is said to have
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A core competence
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The difference between a company competence and a core competence is that
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A company competence represents real proficiency in performing an internal activity whereas a core competence is a competitively relevant activity which a firm performs better than other internal activities
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The difference between a core competence and a distinctive competence is that
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A core competence is a competitively relevant activity which a firm performs especially well in comparison to the other activities it performs, whereas a distinctive competence is a competitively relevant activity which a firm performs especially well in comparison to other firms with which it competes
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Which one of the following is inaccurate as concerns a distinctive competence?
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A distinctive competence is typically less difficult for rivals to copy than a core competence
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For a particular company resource/capability to have real competitive power and perhaps qualify as a basis for competitive advantage, it should
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Be hard for competitors to copy, be durable and long-lasting and not be easily trumped by the different resources/capabilities of rivals
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The objective of competitive strategy is to
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Knock the socks off rival companies by doing a better job of satisfying buyer needs and preferences
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A company can be said to have competitive advantage if
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It has some type of edge over rivals in attracting customers and coping with competitive forces
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Which of the following is not one of the five generic types of competitive strategy?
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A market share dominator strategy
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Which one of the following generic types of competitive strategy is typically the best strategy for a company to employ?
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There is no such thing as a "best" competitive strategy; a company's "best" strategy is always one that is customized to fit both industry and competitive conditions and the company's own resources and competitive capabilities
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A low-cost leader's basis for competitive advantage is
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Meaningfully lower overall costs than competitors
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In which of the following circumstances is a strategy to be the industry's overall low-cost provider not particularly well matched to the market situation?
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When buyers have widely varying needs and special requirements and the prices of substitute products are relatively high
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The essence of a broad differentiation strategy is to
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Be unique in ways that are valuable and appealing to a wide range of buyers
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Opportunities to differentiate a company's product offering
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Can exist in activities all along an industry's value chain
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The most appealing approaches to differentiation are
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Those that are hard or expensive for rivals to duplicate and that also have considerable buyer appeal
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A firm pursuing a best-cost provider strategy
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Seeks to deliver superior value to buyers by satisfying their expectations on key quality/service/features/performance attributes and beating their expectations on price (given what rivals are charging for much the same attributes)
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Strategic alliances
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Are collaborative arrangements where two or more companies join forces to achieve mutually beneficial strategic outcomes
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The best strategic alliances
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Are highly selective, focusing on particular value chain activities and on obtaining a particular competitive benefit
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Which of the following is not a typical reason that many alliances prove unstable or break apart?
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Disagreement over how to divide the profits gained from joint collaboration
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The Achilles heel (or biggest disadvantage/danger/pitfall) of relying heavily on alliances and cooperative strategies is
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Becoming dependent on other companies for essential expertise and capabilities
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The difference between a merger and an acquisition is that
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A merger is a pooling of equals whereas an acquisition involves one company, the acquirer, purchasing and absorbing the operations of another company, the acquired
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Vertical integration strategies
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Extend a company's competitive scope within the same industry by expanding its operations across more parts of the industry value chain
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The strategic impetus for forward vertical integration is to
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Gain better access to end users and better market visibility
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Outsourcing strategies
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Involve farming out value chain activities presently performed in-house to outside specialists and strategic allies
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The big risk of employing an outsourcing strategy is
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Hollowing out a firm's own capabilities and losing touch with activities and expertise that contribute fundamentally to the firm's competitiveness and market success
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A blue ocean type of offensive strategy
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Involves abandoning efforts to beat out competitors in existing markets and, instead, inventing a new industry or new market segment that renders existing competitors largely irrelevant and allows a company to create and capture altogether new demand E. Involves the use of highly creative, never-used-before strategic moves to attack the competitive weaknesses of rivals
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