The Competitive Strategy: Techniques For Analyzing Industries And Competitors is an informative and comprehensive book that delves into the theory, practise, and teaching of business strategies all over the world. Simple yet impactful, the author analyses the complexities of the industrial world, and its cutthroat competition in five underlying forces. These forces are the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of customers and that of suppliers, the imminent threat of substitute products or services and the intensity of competitive rivalry.

The author asserts that thinking about a company’s competitive strategy explicitly is crucial, because it aligns the individual functional departments of the organisation, to a set of common goals and objectives. So, a framework is created for analysing the industry and predicting its evolution in the future. The author also introduces three strategies which account for powerful competitive tools - differentiation, lowest cost, and focus.

The text in this book is segregated into three parts, the first evaluates a general analytical framework in order to correctly analyse the structure of an industry and its competitors. The second part is dedicated to implementing this framework to a wide array of industries and environments.

Contents:
PART I General Analytical Techniques
Chapter 1 The Structural Analysis of Industries
Chapter 2 Generic Competitive Strategies
Chapter 3 A Framework For Competitor Analysis
Chapter 4 Market Signals
Chapter 5 Competitive Moves
Chapter 6 Strategy Toward Buyers and Suppliers
Chapter 7 Structural Analysis Within Industries
Chapter 8 Industry Evolution

PART II Generic Industry Environments
Chapter 9 Competitive Strategy in Fragmented Industries
Chapter 10 Competitive Strategy in Emerging Industries
Chapter 11 The Transition to Industry Maturity
Chapter 12 Competitive Strategy in Declining Industries
Chapter 13 Competition in Global Industries

PART III Strategic Decisions
Chapter 14 The Strategic Analysis of Vertical Integration
Chapter 15 Capacity Expansion
Chapter 16 Entry Into New Business
Appendix A Portfolio Techniques in Competitor Analysis
Appendix B How to Conduct an Industry Analysis

Key Features:

This is the author’s second book and was originally published in 1980.
This book has been translated into nineteen languages, and is approaching its sixtieth print in English.