Human Ressource Marketing Essay

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HRM Markerting - Resit exam

A l’attention de Jean-Yves HAMIOT

Introduction

The concept of competitive advantage was defined by Michael Porter. Competitive advantage is a factor of success that the company has to master better than the competition in order to get a better market share. The competitive advantage that will distinguish the company by a unique strategic market positioning.

Competitive advantage must have three characteristics: it must be sustainable in time, be perfectly identifiable and must be defendable against the competition. Competitive advantage can be challenged by the competition and its maintenance depends on continuing efforts in the company.

To treat the employee as a competitive advantage, researchers and theorists have gone from a simple observation. The performance of each varies according to its well-being at work: a happy worker is more motivated than an unhappy worker, and his work will be better quality. Companies that manage to satisfy their employees, they will increase their competitive advantage in the market. In case of well-being, for example: employees are less absent, give all their strength for achieving the objectives, will stay longer in the business.

Review

At present, competition tends to increase day by day. One company, today leader in its market, may be evicted tomorrow. With the phenomenon of globalization is accelerating, the rise of the Internet, the speed of exchanges and reducing the product life cycle, companies are seen forced to put in place effective strategy. These strategies will sear acquire searched and a significant competitive advantage, sustainable and defensible, and deal with various economic change.

The choice of the best strategy is the major interest of most companies. Strategic thinking is above all a matter of intuition and logic but there are support tools for effective decision. Competitive analysis is, with technological analysis and organizational analysis one of these tools.

• The competitive advantage

Michael Porter in 1980 offers several types of business strategies to gain competitive advantage. According to Porter, there are three different types of generic competitive advantages a company can follow:

1. Leadership by costs (lower cost): This strategy aims to produce at lower costs in all areas. The scope is expanded, seeking to simultaneously target different segments, usually with a standard product, ignoring the essentials such as: packaging, design, advertising, etc. The sources of cost savings, though they vary across sectors, for example: the economies of scale and the expertise or the absence of commercial service or technology.

1. Differentiation: Choose differentiation means that a company seeks to become unique in its sector regarding certain areas of product / services most sought by consumers. The industry in which the company is, its fields of action will be the product characteristics: the type, design, delivery, warranties, and conditions of payment, image, diversity and quality related services, innovation, proximity to customers, among others. This strategy of differentiation allows the company to charge a higher price or retain customers;

1. Niche Targeting: Through the niche targeting strategy, the company is seeking a competitive advantage in a segment or market segment group referred, thus excluding other segments. The strategy of Niche Targeting can be divided into: cost niche targeting (when the company is seeking a cost advantage in the target segment) and, differentiating niche targeting (when the company seeks differentiation in the target segment). The basic question of this strategy is the selection of specific market segments where competition is difficult to meet effectively the needs of consumers.

Porter also describes the basic tool for diagnosing the competitive advantage, and means to intensify: the value chain. Through the value chain the company is divided into core activities (research and development, production, marketing and services) which facilitates identification of the origins of competitive advantage.

Now that we have defined and analyze sources of competitive advantage. Turning to the preservation of this advantage with these two basic elements: production costs and product quality.

To remain competitive, a company, even if it has a competitive advantage, can not afford to be poorly placed in terms of costs. It must therefore take particular care to control costs. This requires a rigorous analysis of the production process, enabling productivity gains, economies of scale, etc.

Meanwhile, it is necessary to preserve and improve the quality of products, services and related services. Indeed, the cost of non-quality is high because lost customers are hard to regain. This is why the company has to develop and innovate upstream during the whole process.

The leaders of the companies they put enough emphasis on the importance of professional behavior? These behaviors valued and used by organizations in the preparation of their future and building a sustainable competitive advantage?

This is a priori advantages of simple requiring no sophisticated technology but requires the strong involvement of a management team. Our goal here is to illustrate through this review how behavior such as the sense of responsibility is a strategic advantage and an observable organizational knowledge, manageable, transmitted to members of an organization and especially not easily copyable by a competitor.

Now that the information and expertise can be a competitive advantage, how to establish a strategy also changed: new factors such as the human factor to be taken into account.

A HRM vision could complement a strictly strategic approach. It is more difficult for the company to build new skills to master assets or resources that could fail him. As the Porter underlined, competitive advantage is not sustainable based on assets or clearly identifiable and accessible resources; it requires that the forces are varied. In the HRM, it is expected to find many adjustment difficulties (learning and unlearning) the complexity of human and organizational mechanisms. And optimization of skills a business requires a reading at both strategic and HR.

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