Services To Corporate Competitive Strategy Research

This dissertation based on study of service enterprises establishes the model of competitive strategy for service enterprises. The author thinks that the present theories of competitive strategy are not suitable for service enterprises. So it's necessary to study the shared characters of service enterprises, and find the basic solution. The solution of this dissertation is the model of service enterprises. The model is made of three parts: The first part is the strategic factor, including environments,resources,visions,and organizations. The second part is the strategic channel, including competitive tactics,process tactics and staff tactics. The competitive tactic is the factor of first part, and also is the factor of the second part. The competitive tactics are made of supply chain management (SCM) , service quality management(TQM) and customization management. The third part is the strategic objectives, Including consumer contact,consumer dependence,consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty. This model is build up with two opposite triangles, showing the relations between all the factors of this model. The introduction begins with the overview of the research purpose ,the basic concepts and knowledge background. First of all it states briefly the divisions of service industry, there are many methods to divide this industry, because this industry is complex and difficult to divide. The dissertation based on the division by Mr.Lovelock, the service industry is divided in this division by two latitudes, one is the character of service activity, another is the receiver of the service. This division is better to reflect the common characters of service enterprises. As for the concept of "service enterprise", the author talks less about it, and defines it with "the enterprises mainly benefit with service", analysing the function of production-style service industry to economy booming. The research objectives,research methods,technologic channel and creation are described at the end of this chapter. The first chapter is "Literature Review". The research is based on the result of classical competitive strategic theories on manufactory plant. From earlier Henri Fayol to Ansoff, from Michael Porter to Prahalad, and Andrews,Chandler,Penrose etc., Their theories are introduced in this thesis. In the field of service enterprises, these specialists are listed:Fitzsimmons,Booms,Bitner,Sasser and Arburich, their contribution to the research is the foundation of this paper. Chapter 2 is entitled "The fundamental framework of service enterprise competitive strategic theory". Three parts are discussed in this chapter: one is factor structure, compared with the factors by Porter,Kesily and Besanko, combined with the characters of service enterprises, the author thinks that these factors are key factors, they are environments,resources,visions, organizations and tactics. And then, analyses the structure of this model, decides the structure form with triangle. The second part is analysis of the channel structure, Arburich's theory is useful to this model, his triangle theory is used to form the strategic channel of this model. The key factors of this part are tactics,process and staff. In the third part, objective system, is made of consumer contact,consumer satisfaction,consumer dependence and consumer loyalty. This structure is chosen with homocentric circle. And then, the whole model has been built up. Chapter 3 is "Analyzing on strategic factors part of service enterprise". The four factors are totally analyzed one by one. The environment is analyzed with PEST method; At the resource analyzing, the author has a new idea to divide the resource by two latitudes: whether visible or whether idiosyncratic. Based on this idea, resources are divided into four parts: buying resource,standard resource,monopoly resource and culture resource. For this division, service enterprise can find the shortage of it's own resource and know how to look for the relevant resource. This chapter analyses the vision, the building and the management; At the analyzing of organization, this paper introduces the development process of organization theory, and emphasizes the research on design of organization structure. At last, seven characters of organization structure in service enterprise are listed. Chapter 4 is entitled "Analyzing on strategic channel part of service enterprise". This chapter is the longest and most practical one in whole paper. The first part is tactic channel, including SCM,TQM and Customization Management. SCM is very important to integrate all kinds of resource and declines the cost of business. TQM is the core of service enterprise management, but it's difficult to evaluate. In this paper, some improvements are made and the other factors affecting Service Quality are emphasized,for example, Service Modernization and Culture Difference; The second part is process channel research. The rational process is very important to service enterprise, in this paper, the author gives some methods of process design and analyses the effect testing of process; The third part is staff channel research. The author thinks that the staff is the key factor of service enterprise strategic implement. So the satisfaction of staff is the important topic for service enterprise. In this portion, the author consults a large number of latest information about this field, and does research on theory with demonstration, some suggestions are given in this portion. The chapter 5 is "Analyzing on strategic objective part of service enterprise", emphasizing consummating the theory structure of objective part, for instance, defining the concepts,establishing the relations between these concepts, and making some the useful suggestions. The consumer dependence is a new concept in this field, it is defined as someone's usually choosing certain brand in some similar brands. The author thinks that the majority of the service enterprises should choose the objective with consumer dependence, and aim the final objective of consumer loyalty. For this idea, the author investigates the Credit Card in Nanjing market, the result shows that there is correlation between consumer satisfaction and consumer dependence, it can explain some present phenomena, though it's different from the previous conclusion. The Sixth chapter is entitled "The suggestions of competitive strategies for Chinese service enterprises." In this chapter, the author analyses the two cases of China Merchant Bank and American Southwest Airlines, points out that there are some common problems in Chinese service enterprises. After analyzing these problems, some suggestions are given for these companies, on the whole, these suggestions are based on the model of this thesis. The whole dissertation along with the line of model establishing,validating and application, combining theory with practice, combining qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, gives the model of competitive strategy for service enterprises, and some suggestions for Chinese service enterprises. The author tries to find a way to make our service companies developing rapidly, especially in the situation of China being the member of WTO.