Strategic Positioning Based On Customer Value Innovation

Along with more intense competition and changing customers' need and want and rapid developing technology, the corporations are faced with more and more austere challenge. A lot of researches and practices indicate that strategic management is an ultimate approach for the corporations to gain sustaining competitive advantage in complex and turbulent environment. Strategic positioning is the heart and soul of strategic management. And along with the economy globalization and market internationalization, the corporations of China had to compete with multinational corporations all over the world. The corporations of China must set down correctly competitive strategy to gain sustaining competitive advantage on the basis of the environment they face and inside resource, or carrying out strategic positioning is the cannot but choice.Chapter 1 expatiates on that strategic positioning is essential for a corporation to gain sustaining competitive advantage. Firstly, changing customers' need and want alters the way of thought about competitive strategy; Secondly, turbulent environment makes the corporations be confronted with more austere challenge; Thirdly, China' entering WTO pricks up competition in our country. The Chapter think& that customer value innovaticm is the core content on strategic positioning and the source of sustaining competitive advantage. So a corporation must base on customer to think over strategic positioning. By customer value innovation, a corporation satisfies its customer and gains customer loyalty and sustaining competitive advantage. The chapter analyses some mistakes while strategic positioning that include blurry object and blindness on strategic positioning in spite of own competence and lack of spirit of value innovation.Chapter 2 reviews the origin and the course of development of theory of strategic positioning. Strategic positioning is essentially that a corporation establishes organic and systematic relation between it and the environment. So, the theory of strategic positioning comes of Andrews' research. He discussed "what is likely to do" and "what is capable of doing" by analyzing a corporation' strength and weakness and the environment' opportunity and threat. Andrews' frame has been fundamentals of strategic positioning. There are three types of theories of strategic positioning, that is, inside-fit-outside and outside-in and inside-out, the chapter sums up the three and analyzes their points of view and shortages.Chapter 3 improves Andrews' frame and establishes new three-dimension frame. The shortage of Andrews' frame is that it only discussed "what is likely to do" and "what is capable of doing" by analyzing a corporation' strength and weakness and the environment' opportunity and threat. The two can be reduced "what to do", and it essentially belongs to the issue on strategy formation, not strategy implementation. In fact, strategic positioning is a dynamic and systematic engineering, and a corporation must think about three questions: "what to do" and "how to do" and "who to do", and band together strategy formation and strategy implementation. The chapter thinks that customer should be basis of strategy thought. In order to gain sustaining competitive advantage, a corporation must provide its customer with more valuable product or service by customer value innovation.Chapter 4 discusses strategic logic of customer value innovation and compares the customer value innovation strategy with the conventional competitive strategy. Value cognitionof customer comes of the products or services that a corporation provides with or the way that a corporation provides its customer with the products and services. So, customer value innovation can be divided into two types: one is based product and the other is based business way. The former includes evolving and leaping product innovation, the latter is not same as technology innovation and product innovation, and it carries out customer value innovation by altering competitive rule, improving business, and fa...