BSG Chapter 4 Quiz

The two most important parts of SWOT analysis are

(1) Drawing conclusions from the four SWOT lists about the company’s overall situation and (2) translating these conclusions into strategic actions to better match the company’s strategy to its resource strengths and market opportunities, to correct the important weaknesses, and to defend against external threat.

Benchmarking involves

comparing how different companies preform various value chain activities and then making cross-company comparisons of these activities.

The difference between a core competence and a distinctive competence is that

a core competence is an activity that a company not only performs quite well but is central to its strategy and competitiveness, whereas a distinctive competence is a competitively relevant activity that a firm performs better than rival firms

Which of the following is not a component of evaluating a company’s resource capabilities, relative cost position, and competitive strength versus rivals?

Scanning the environment to determine which company resource strengths offer the best prospects for achieving sustainable competitive advantage

A company resource weakness or competitive deficiency

is something a company lacks or does poorly (in comparison to rivals) or a condition that puts it at a disadvantage in the marketplace

The three best indicators of how well a company’s present strategy is working are whether

the company is achieving its stated financial and strategic objectives, is an above-average industry performer, and is gaining customers and market share

In Table 4.2, which of the following is not an example of an external threat to a company’s future profitability?

Having too few resource capabilities that are well-matched to the company’s available market opportunities

As shown in Figure 4.2, the three steps of SWOT analysis include

(1) identifying the company’s resource strengths and weaknesses, its market opportunities, and the external threats to its future well-being, (2) drawing conclusions from the SWOT listings about the company’s overall business situation, and (3) translating these conclusions into strategic actions for improving the company’s strategy and business prospects

In Table 4.2, which one of the following is not an example of a potential market opportunity that a company may have?

A situation where several of the company’s weakest competitors are acquired by one of the company’s strong competitors, thus making it easier to steal away customers of the weak competitors

In a weighted competitive strength assessment as is illustrated in Table 4.3, each strength measure is assigned an importance weight based on

its perceived importance in determining the degree to which a company’s competitive power in the marketplace is strong, average, or weak

The competitive power of a company resource strength or competitive capability does not hinge on which one of the following

Whether the strength or capability represents a distinctive competence

Two useful tools for determining whether a company’s customer value proposition, prices, and costs are competitive are

vale chain analysis and benchmarking

According to the illustration in Table 4.3 and the accompanying discussion of weighted competitive strength assessment, the company with the highest overall strength score

enjoys a net competitive advantage vis-a-vis key rivals, with the size of its advantage being singled by how much its overall strength score exceeds the overall strength scores of each of the other companies included in the assessment

Which of the following is not an option for lowering the costs of distribution related activities?

Implementing an activity-based cost accounting system for all distribution-related activities and ceasing to perform all those distribution-related activities having unacceptably high costs

The best example of a company strength is

having proven technological expertise and ability to churn out new and improved products on a regular basis

Which one of the following is not a part of determining whether a company’s prices and costs are competitive?

Resource value analysis

To build a competitive advantage advantage by "out-managing" rivals in performing value chain activities, a company must

best rivals in performing value chain activities more proficiently (such that it gains a differentiation-based competitive advantage keyed to delivering what customers perceive as a superior product offering) or else beast rivals in performing value chain activities more cheaply (thus achieving a cost-based competitive advantage)

Which one of the following statements is false when it comes to using value chain analysis to determine a company’s cost competitiveness?

Whether a company’s costs are competitive with those of its close rivals depends on how the costs of its internally-performed value chain activities compare with the costs of the internally-performed value chain activities of its close rivals

Calculating weighted competitive strength scores for a company and comparing them against the weighted strength scores of key competitors

helps a company decide what offensive and defensive moves strategic moves to make– which of its competitive strengths to exploit in winning business away from rivals and which competitive weaknesses to try to correct

Which of the following is central to the task of identifying the strategy-related issues and problems that merit the front-burner attention of company managers?

Compiling a "worry list" of "how to…," "whether to…," and "what to do about…,"– this worry list should be based, in part, on an assessment of the company’s external environment (the answers to the six questions posed in Chapter 3) and an evaluation of the company’s own resources and ability to compete successfully (the answers to the first four questions in this chapter)

Which of the following is not one of the objectives of benchmarking?

to learn which company in an industry is using the greatest number of best practices in performing its value chain activities and thus very likely has the industry’s lowest cost value chain

In table 4.2, which one of the following is not an example of a potential resource weakness or competitive deficiency that a company may have?

Having a single, unified functional strategy instead of several distinct functional strategies

Which of the following provides the most accurate picture of whether a company is cost competitive with its rivals?

How the combined costs of a company’s internally preformed activities performed by its suppliers, and the activities preformed by its forward channel allies compare against the costs of the supplier-preformed, internally-preformed, and forward channel ally-preformed value chain systems employed by rival firms

Which of the following statements about company value chains is false?

Identifying the primary and secondary activities that comprise a company’s value chain and comparing these actives to the value chain activities of rivals is called benchmarking

When a company performs a competitively important activity better than rivals, it is said to have

a distinctive competence in performing that activity

A company’s options for lowering the costs of internally-performed value chain activities do not include

working closely with suppliers and/or distributions-realted allies to eliminate costs in their working portions of the company’s value chain system

Calculating weighted competitive strength scores for a company and comparing them against the weighted competitive strength scores for a company and comparing them against the weighted strength scores of key competitors

helps a company decide what offensive and defensive moves strategic moves to make– which of its competitive strengths to exploit in winning business away from rivals and which competitive weaknesses to try to correct

A company’s value chain

consists of two broad categories of activities: the primary activities foremost in the company’s scheme for creating and delivering value to customers and the requisite support activities that facilitate and enhance the performance of the primary activities

Which of the following statements about a company’s resources, competencies, and capabilities is false?

Companies in the top tier of their industry typically have at least two and sometimes as many as four distinctive competencies, plus a management team that has proven dynamic capability to periodically freshen and renew their company’s resource portfolio

The three steps of SWOT analysis are

identifying the company’s resource strengths and weaknesses and its opportunities and threats, drawing conclusions about the company’s overall business situation, and translating the conclusions into strategic action to improve the company’s strategy and business prospects

Which of the following is not accurate as concerns the task of identifying the strategic issues and problems that merit front-burner managerial attention?

Identifying the strategic issues and problems that the company faces is the first thing that company managers need to do before starting to analyze the company’s external environment, resources, and competitiveness.

In Table 4.2, which of the following is not an example of a potential external threat to a company’s future profitability?

The company’s lack of well-known brand name

Which of the following is most likely to represent a company’s most potent resource strength?

A distinctive competence in performing a competitively important value chain activity

Evaluating a company’s resource capabilities, relative cost position, and competitive strength versus rivals entails examining whether

the company has attractively strong resources and competitive capabilities and whether these are well matched to its market opportunities and the external threats to its future well-being

In Table 4.2, which of the following is not an example of a potential market opportunity that a company may have?

The potential to increase profits because or eroding bargaining power on the part of buyers of the industry’s product

To build a competitive advantage by "out-managing" rivals in performing value chain activities, a company must

beat rivals in performing value chain activities more proficiently (such that it gains a differentiation-based competitive advantage keyed to delivering what customers perceive a superior product offering) or else beat rivals in performing what customers perceive as a superior product offering) or else beat rivals in performing value chain activities more cheaply (thus achieving a cost-based competitive advantage)