Chapter 3 Vocab Flashcards
Firm-specific strengths that allow a company to differentiate its products and/or achieve substantially lower costs to achieve a competitive advantage
Distinctive Competencies
Assets of a company - valuable when they enable the company to create strong demand for its products, and/or to lower its cost. Valuable resources are more likely to lead to sustainable competitive advantage if they are rare, difficult to imitate, and their are barriers to imitation.
Resources
Physical entities, such as land, buildings, equipment, inventory, and money
Tangible Resources
Non-physical entities such as brand name, company reputation, experiential knowledge, and intellectual property, including patents, copyrights, and trademarks
Intangible Resources
A company’s skills at coordinating its resources and putting them to productive use
Capabilities
The idea that a company is a chain of activities that transforms inputs into outputs that customers value
Value Chain
Activities related to the design, creation, and delivery of the product, its marketing, and its support and after-sales service
Ex: R&D, Production, Marketing and Sales, Customer Service
Primary Activities
Activities of the value chain that provide inputs that allow the primary activities to take place
Ex: Material Management (Logistics), Human Resources, Information Systems (IT), Infrastructure
Support Activities
The output produced per employee
Employee Productivity
Development of products that are new to the world or have superior attributes to existing products
Product Innovation
Development of a new process for producing products and delivering them to customers
Process Innovation
Time that it takes for a good to be delivered or a service to be performed
Customer Response Time
Factors that make it difficult for a competitor to copy a company’s distinctive competencies
Barriers to Imitation
The ability of an enterprise to identify, value, assimilate, and use new knowledge
Absorptive Capacity
