Almost all businesses have to face stiff competition with their business rivals in virtually any market today. Having an advantage over them is not enough to guarantee you can sustain your position on the competitive ground. An ongoing analytical survey of the market and its volatility is required to keep you updated and informed of the need for improving the quality of your product and ensuring the superiority of your service. Neglecting to keep your eye on the changing climate of the market creates an unacceptable risk. This article describes the importance of competitive advantage management in today’s highly competitive world.

Competitive advantage management is a set of methods and strategies that work to not only position your company or business but also make it stand out in the market. Understanding the competitive advantage of your company over its rival companies is the key to creating a dominant position in your market. The business plan that you have sketched as an outline of the future progress of your business should incorporate competitive advantage management. Without it, your business plan is incomplete and will be ineffective as well.

• Cost leadership – in most markets, most competition is based around price. However, cost leadership is very difficult to sustain, unless you can develop a proprietary technology or monopolize suppliers. Using competitive advantage management as the focal point of your business plan, you can develop a unique selling proposition that eliminates the need for competing on the basis of cost leadership. By creating a unique value proposition, you can elicit huge response from a mass of customers.

• Promotion of the business – a focus on the management of competitive advantages will help you promote your product and service by implementing effective marketing strategies. Promotion of product and service plays an instrumental part in the marketing of your business.

• Continual assessment – one of the requirements of competitive advantage management, continual assessment of your product and service strategies, will help you sustain your edge over your competitors. Assessing the quality perceptions of the product keeps you aware of your image in the market and the market value of the product.

• Image enhancement – managing competitive advantages over your rivals works for the enhancement of your image in the market. Product positioning, quality checking and effective marketing are the means of gaining competitive advantages over others. It helps set your company or business on the road to sustainable success.