Overcoming Competition in Business
Introduction For one to be successful in business, one must be very aggressive in the way of doing things. New ideas are also vital as they help in making the customers more attracted to them even if there are other competitors. Mc Donald brothers are an example of what happens in business.
When other joints were opened, sold at low prices and people went to jobs with high wages. They thought of making their restaurant look more unique and attractive. They changed the menu and also specialized on selling hamburgers which were doing well for the business. They also reduced their service costs by making the customers serve themselves. They restructured their restaurant to have several service windows. The whole thing looked attractive not only to the kids but also to the teenagers and working class families.
This is because everything happening in the restaurant such as preparing the hamburgers was visible by all. Production system was improved, employees were trained and this improved the quality of work leading to improved profits to about $100,000. In 1950, their speedy service system was in the American Restaurant Magazine’s front cover. It was so exciting that many restaurant operators started asking about it and many of them copied the idea such as, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. These tips could be used in other fields in business and yield positive results.
I will discuss how we can use these ideas and others have improved the Microsoft products. The inclusions as well as diversity are vital elements in the business success of Microsoft. It has created a business environment in which bright and diverse employees who have varied skills, experience and perspective work as a team to meet the consumers demand. In the Microsoft Company, inclusion and global diversity are a long term principle in business that leads to the success of their business.
The company has realized that the United States and other regions such as Brazil, China, India and Africa are increasing in population and therefore are target segments for its business and work place. Various companies are interested in making strategies that enable them move from radition competition and make new market places where there is no competition. This is called blue ocean strategy (Kim et al, 2005). These are also the disruption strategies (Christensen et al, 2003). All these focus on creating new market for the business to enter.
This is by coming up with a new service or product. The innovation can be made by an individual or by the company. However, the success of this innovation is dependent on the results of the actions by uncoordinated agents who respond to the exciting new possibility (Tse, 2002). Economic decision making requires the notion of ‘grabber’ that grabs the interests of people and the ‘holder’ which can be a group of agents who support the process, skills and knowledge that enable those who were grabbed to realize its value. As the market grows bigger, new chances open for the latecomers to come in and attack the flip part of incumbent’s strength, which has been well made and is difficult to change.
Strong incumbent responds effectively to the latecomer. When the latecomer is deciding on what angle to use, there are three phases of invasion strategy. One is to establish a beachhead position, secondly, build internal holder that support scaling of a new value proposition and thirdly, invade a mainstream market. In this paper, I try to look at how Microsoft Company uses the following strategies to overcome competition.Microsoft was not the first PC operating system, first word processor, spreadsheet or even the first graphical interface.
It must have had the last comer advantage. They must ensure that the customers change their preferences. This makes the customers consider new value preposition that is introduced by the company and make decisions on buying the products (Tse and Guo, 2003). The most known strategy that Microsoft uses is the network marketing. Each of its window products is compatible with other window products. For example, documents on office Microsoft are opened by most computers.
Microsoft is in every area and launches new products regularly, such as Zune in music market, peripheral markets of computer; it is leading in the operating systems and also has tablets. It also involves itself in cloud computing giving competition to players that are in market. It is also learninng and adapting very fast to the environment in that it knows that people require security and therefore provides it to them(Bhasin, 2012). Windows 8 is more secure than windows 7. One of the main problem in Microsoft is that has a follower strategy in that it rarely comes up with a new innovation.
For example, Microsoft office does not change much except for the graphics. Microsoft is customer based as one can get help offline as well as online. The notion of the two-sided market can also be used whereby two agent groups work together for example the buyer and the seller sides. The two sides can be the offline and the online. The network platforms offer benefit to the two sides of the market.
They may therefore charge the two sides for the services. As long as the two individual agents on both sides of the market work well, the chances of the two networks to work together increases (Tse, 2006). The importance of the competition is to have an ecosystem view of the competition in the two-sided market. The two can enjoy a very healthy growth.When a computer crashes, one is able to identify the problem and if he or she is an expert, will be able to rejuvenate it.
It is also very easy to use in that the Microsoft OS is well known for its easy use, start button is also revolutionalised. Both young and old are able to use it. It is also been rated among the ten top companies for its brand equity for it has different business to business and consumer products (Bhasin, 2012). The future of Microsoft looks bright; they have launched new PC as well as mobile operating system which are already selling its computer hardware Surface window RT tablet. Others are coming out with new PCs having Microsoft windows 8 which give the user tiles to represent the programs. Just like the Mc Donald’s restaurant where they came up with a strategy of speedy service system, Microsoft is coming up with products such as ipads which are very fast hence attract more people to buy them.
Over four million windows phones got sold in the end of year 2012 which was an increase as compared to the previous year. The Microsoft Operating system still dominates the market of PC and Office suite has continued being a cash cow (Magid, 2012).
