BUS 411 Unit 3 DB: Competitive Advantage

18. This week, we have analyzed the importance of having a competitive advantage in business. A competitive advantage distinguishes a company from its competitors. It also is the recognition that a company either delivers quality products at a lower cost than the competition or offers support and services at a greater value than the competition.To gain a competitive advantage, a company must often respond to customer demands quickly. Companies that can satisfy customer demands for rapid response build brand loyalty, differentiate their products, and can charge higher prices for products. For your discussion this week, please answer the following questions:

How are the four building blocks of competitive advantage related to each other?
What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers?
Over time, will the adoption of Six Sigma quality improvement processes give a company a competitive advantage, or will it be required only to achieve parity with competitors?
Make sure you conduct additional research when answering this question.

The four fundamental factors that define competitive advantage are efficiency, innovation, excellence, and customer response. A business can be able to charge more but still reduce its expenses when it’s more efficient, produces higher quality products, and offers superior service to customers. The higher price, particularly for improvement in product quality, or lower cost of units, particularly for processes that have been improved, could be the result of superior innovation (Wijaya and Suasih, 2020). They are interconnected even though they are analyzed separately below. For instance, higher-quality could result in better efficiency, while innovation could increase all three of these elements as well as customer response. Cont…