Advanced Competitive Strategy

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/advanced-competitive-strategy

Introduction

### Course Review: Advanced Competitive Strategy on Coursera In the fast-paced world of business, having a robust strategy to maintain a competitive edge is indispensable. Coursera's "Advanced Competitive Strategy" course offers a comprehensive dive into strategic methodologies that can significantly bolster an individual's understanding and practical application of competitive strategy. #### Overview "Advanced Competitive Strategy" builds upon the foundational knowledge established in the prior course, "Competitive Strategy." This course goes a step further by focusing on real-world examples, interactive opportunities for students, and contemporary issues faced by firms today. In an ever-evolving market landscape, the ability to maintain a loyal customer base while effectively managing competitive threats is more crucial than ever. #### Course Syllabus Breakdown 1. **Maintaining Your Customer Base**: The course begins by addressing ways to keep your customers from switching to competitors. This module takes an analytical approach that combines customer behavior understanding with competitor actions, equipping learners with strategies to effectively ‘lock in’ customers while acknowledging their own strategic maneuvers. 2. **Determine Your Prices Wisely**: A rigorous examination of price discrimination helps to explore how companies can intelligently align pricing strategies with customer perceptions and product design. By learning various forms of price discrimination, students can optimize their pricing strategies effectively. 3. **Keep Your Business Clean**: The importance of navigating competition authorities and legal boundaries is highlighted here. With a focus on maintaining fair competition, this module is tailored for those who aim to scale their operations while understanding the risks and opportunities posed by regulatory entities. 4. **Increase Your Returns**: In this module, the concepts of network effects and firm boundaries are explored. Understanding how these concepts influence strategic decisions can provide learners with actionable insights to enhance returns and develop more effective business strategies. 5. **Strategies in Network Markets**: Building on previous concepts, this section delves into the dynamics of network markets, emphasizing the significance of reaching critical mass. It sheds light on consumer behavior and risk perceptions, offering strategies to enhance market penetration. 6. **Achieve Growth with the Help of Partners**: This module tackles mergers and acquisitions (M&A), elaborating on the importance of strategic partnerships for growth. It equips students with a thorough understanding of M&A processes, pitfalls, and potential advantages when aligned with the right partners. 7. **Grow Organically**: In a bonus module, the nature of organic growth is dissected. Students will learn the importance of leveraging and expanding their existing product lines, addressing limitations, and exploring strategies for international growth. 8. **Final Exam**: The course concludes with a comprehensive assessment, testing students' grasp of the various strategic concepts explored throughout prior modules. #### Recommendations "Advanced Competitive Strategy" is highly recommended for anyone looking to enhance their strategic thinking capabilities, particularly business professionals, entrepreneurs, and MBA candidates. The emphasis on real-world case studies and interaction makes it engaging and relevant. Here are a few reasons why you should consider enrolling: - **Practical Application**: The course nurtures critical thinking and enables the application of theories to actual business dilemmas. - **Expert Instruction**: Led by seasoned faculty, learners benefit from insights gleaned from extensive industry experience, making complex concepts accessible and understandable. - **Flexibility**: With a self-paced structure, participants can balance learning with other professional commitments. - **Networking Opportunities**: Engaging with a community of like-minded peers opens doors for networking and collaborative learning. In conclusion, whether you're a seasoned strategist or a newcomer to competitive dynamics, the "Advanced Competitive Strategy" course on Coursera will equip you with the tools needed to navigate and succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. Embrace this opportunity to deepen your strategic insight and drive your career forward!

Syllabus

Maintaining your Customer Base

In this module we will look at strategies that can help us maintain our customer base. For this, we will take an analytical approach that helps us understand the point at which our customers will switch to a competitors and the amount of money a competitor is willing to spend to acquire our customers. Based on this understanding, we will derive applicable strategies that can help us lock in our customers strategically. We will do this by keeping in mind that also customers may apply their own strategies to avoid lock in and further, that our competitors will seek to apply strategies in the pursuit of making our customers theirs.

We will look at the benefits of price discrimination as a strategic tool that can help us to skim off our customer’s willingness to pay and increase our utility accordingly. We are then going to learn the different ways of aligning a price discrimination strategy with successful product design and the three different ways in which a price discrimination strategy can be formulated.

In this module we will demonstrate that if you want to operate a business you have to keep in mind that there are some powerful external entities, so-called competition authorities, that highly value and safeguard competition. While this supports and opens up opportunities for your business if it is new or relatively small and would otherwise simply be crushed by larger incumbent firms – it can also put you in danger if you have already achieved a certain size, have acquired more market power are already in a rather powerful position.

In this module, we are going to discover two very important new concepts with which you can increase your business’s returns: Network effects and boundaries of the firm. We will find that considering these two concepts in formulating our business strategy can help us improve our strategy’s effectiveness and eventually increase our returns.

We will build upon our knowledge from module 4 and look into competition in network markets, adoption rates and the advantage of critical mass. Following from this, we will learn why this is essential for reaching the point of critical mass. We will moreover discuss ways in which companies can raise the attention of potential consumers and reduce their perceived risk.

We will look at the trends, goals and processes of mergers and acquisitions, differentiate the two terms and examine external and internal factors that can hinder the process. We will also find out about the striking advantages that can make a successful merger or an acquisition worthwhile if you have identified the right match for your company and we will eventually learn about the process that is involved in real world M&A activities.

In this special bonus module, we will discuss the relationship between profitability and growth on the one hand and the limitations that are faced by small companies on the other. We will learn what organic growth is and that it can be achieved by either protecting and building up our existing customer base and product lines, or by developing new products or markets – or, in turn, by diversifying our products portfolio. We will acknowledge and address external and internal limitations to growth and – as a final consideration – will look into the possibilities of international strategies for growth.