Competitive Advantage Strategies Essays

Competitive Advantage Strategies Essays Competitive Advantage Strategies Essay Competitive Advantage Strategies Essay Differentiation relates to uniqueness of product characteristics, which identify consumers hard-to-articulate or latent needs and wants. Mandom strives to differentiate itself from competitors in such a way that when consumers use Gatsby products, they experience a sense of novelty and comfort that has been never found on other brands. To this end, scientists in RD department constantly research into consumers felt senses of novelty and comfort by looking at product functionality, effectiveness, usability, stability and safety, together with utilization of latest technologies and ingredients. The company puts RD as primary investment object. At present, it has buildings used specifically for RD purpose. The department also carries out research management to secure intellectual property by registration of proprietary patents. This maintains Mandoms technological dominance and helps it to excel in competition. As a result of extensive RD effort, Mandom has developed a board product line and unique features for consumers. For the brand Gatsby, the company has categories like hair styling, hair coloring, hair care. Under hair styling, it also has hair mist, hair wax, hair clay, hair foam, hair gel and so on. Even under hair wax, it has three different series. The hair wax has many unique features, such as ability to restyle many times, Smooth Polymer that produces less sticky and light finish and different shining or styling powers of hair wax for consumers to choose accordingly. Mandom maximizes lifestyle value through high-quality products at reasonable prices for the greatest number of consumers worldwide. It has developed mass production process to cut cost. At production sites, workers and technicians work together to continuously improve and standardize the technological capabilities to achieve maximal production efficiency. Besides, It built three out of its four plants in Indonesia and China for a purpose of lowering labor cost. Also, Mandom takes design and quality control initiatives to ensure that each product that consumer has bought in is exactly of the same quality as the one produced at research phase. The company wants to balance product prices to increase consumers perception of value and meanwhile, ensures quality and offers high-value products to delight consumers. For example, Mandom designs refill packs for many product kinds of Gatsby. Therefore, customers save money if they wish to continue using the original product and will appreciate the value of Gatsby products. For Mandom, prompt response to market is the key to business success. Since Mandoms core products life cycle is short, the success or failure of new products is a major factor underlying the success. Thus, it pursues the product development driven by a cyclic process of research, design, and verification to continuously give concrete form to meet consumer wants and needs. In addition, the company regularly holds cross-functional meeting to discuss consumer latent wants and generate new product ideas. It can always carry out brand renewal at the end of product life cycle. In product development, it responds to customer wants or needs wherever they exist. Even if this involves a product category where Mandom has no previous development experience, it will rise to the challenge to research, develop and sell a product to add diversity to the range of categories. Mandom has developed an efficient supply network in which it balances the consumer preferences and supply in each country by leveraging the distinctive characteristics and production mix of its 3 production sites. Then, the companys subsidiary in each region receives a supply of products from the nearest production site and distributes to outlets such as cosmetic shop, supermarket, pharmacy in shortest time. The supply network is supported by in-store promotions to enhance the visibility of Mandom products so that consumers will notice the latest Mandom offerings immediately.