Chapter 11: Competitive Strategy and Sustainability

Vocabulary flashcards covering key strategic concepts, analytical tools, market structures, and competitive dynamics from Chapter 11: Competitive Strategy and Sustainability.

Strategic Group

A set of companies that compete in similar ways with similar business models pursuing similar sets of customers.

Strategic Group Map

A chart used to analyze industry clusters by scoring and plotting competitors on the most relevant horizontal and vertical factors (such as relative fare price and average airport size).

Barrier to Mobility

Any factor that limits the ability of a company to move between strategic groups due to the difficulty and time required to reconfigure activities or activity systems.

Strategy Canvas

A diagnostic tool used to assess relative strengths and weaknesses against specific customer purchase criteria, uncover how companies offer unique value, and identify new ways to compete with rivals.

Competitor Response Profile

A framework that evaluates a rival's motives (objectives and assumptions) and capabilities (strategy, resources, and capabilities) to assess how they will respond to specific moves.

Game Theory

A structured approach to the analysis of competitor interaction that yields predictions about which strategic actions are most likely to be chosen by rivals.

Simultaneous Move Games

A category of game theory interactions evaluated through analytical concepts such as Nash equilibrium and dominant strategy.

Infinitely Repeated Games

A class of game theory interactions where players believe there is a future, typically characterized by tit-for-tat strategies.

Tit-for-Tat Strategy

A competitive strategy used in repeated games and oligopoly environments where a firm actively monitors and mimics rival behavior.

Market Structure

The way rivals in a market interact and bargain for advantage; in simplest terms, the number of rivals in a particular market (e.g., monopoly, oligopoly, or perfect competition).

Stable Market Environment

A market context where the set of competitors faced by a firm, along with supporting technologies and environmental factors, changes slowly.

Dynamic Market Environment

A market context marked by rapid product releases, new entrants, or consolidations, requiring firms to reconfigure processes and capabilities to emphasize speed and innovation.

Sustaining Competitive Advantage

Preventing rivals from offering the same value by pre-empting rare resources, securing government-sanctioned barriers, creating buyer switching costs, and leveraging network effects or rare intangible assets.