Marketing

1. What is a sustainable competitive advantage?

To achieve a temporary competitive advantage is hard to do but to develop a competitive advantage into a sustainable competitive advantage is even harder to do, because this means that the company must possess value-creating things or capabilities that cannot be duplicated or imitated by other firms, nor can they made redundant -overbodig- by developments in the environment Therefore SCA could be defined as the prolonged -verlengd- benefit of formulating and implementing some unique value-creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors along with the inability to duplicate or imitate the benefits of his strategy and the absence of threatening market developments. (12manage.com)

SCAs Dell:

1. The ability to produce a line of high performance products of superior quality. Many of Dell's products had features that were superior to IBM systems and were frequently ranked by publications such as PC Magazine and PC World.

2. Because of Dell's direct relationship marketing concept,

- Dell gets real-time input from its customers regarding their product and service requirements and their views on various products in the market.

- This input gives the company a competitive advantage in tailoring its products offerings and communication programs to meet its customer needs

- Direct relationship marketing eliminates the 25% to 45% dealer mark-up, thereby enabling the company to price its products aggressively

3. Whether it's anticipating the technology needs of the customer or supporting them with fast, reliable delivery and on-site service, Dell has been able to create a feeling of personalization - of a relationship - that comes