Business-Level Strategies: Balancing Profit & Returns for Stakeholders - Essay Sample

Introduction

Business-level strategies refer to strategic plans a business puts in place to focus on how to attract, attain, and satisfy customers with a view of making a profit (Matt et al., 2015). Corporate strategy levels primarily focus on how to balance between making a profit and creating returns for stakeholders as well. For corporate entities to achieve their goals, they need to engage in creating several business units in different industries. In that context, it is imperative to note that a business-level strategy is concerned with creating a large customer base for a higher volume of sales to make a profit. On the other hand, the corporate strategy helps in determining business units a company can purchase and sell to integrate activities to get interaction or synergies between the groups.

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Under the business-level strategy, competitive rivalries and dynamics will always arise, and businesses struggle to gain a competitive advantage over their opponents. In that case, business managers must be strategic to ensure consistency in their business structures and management. Therefore, there must be a reasonable level of flexibility and speed to gain a market advantage under an environment of competitive dynamics. Consistency is equally essential for the survival and continuity of the business based on its ability to conjunct with business and environmental changes (Matt et al., 2015). In that context, the environment of dynamic competition calls for firms to be strategically able to necessitate an adaptation with external changes. Under a stable or unaltered business environment, there might be unchanged business behaviors for an extended period. However, under the competitive dynamics and rivalry, consistency, and the ability to adapt to external environmental changes are the best approaches for the survival of the business.

Under corporate rivalry and competitive dynamics, corporate organizations must engage in externally oriented planning to gain a competitive advantage over other firms (Pacheo & Dean, 2015). It is imperative to remember that the corporate strategic level of management involves managing different units of innovation and production to make a profit and create sustainable returns of stakeholders. In that light, corporate planners must adapt to the ever-changing global climate and align with the dynamics of competition. Conservative corporations that never adapt to external environmental changes may find themselves obsolete in their production and marketing strategies. That will adversely affect their capacity to be innovative to match the competitive standards in the industry.

Another way to manage competitive rivalry and dynamics is to engage in a variety of industries to expand the corporation's ability to multitask. That calls for the need for forecast-based planning where intellectual property skills must be defined. A company will be able to understand the level of technological sophistication and create a new variety of products to supplement the original products in the market (Pacheco & Dean, 2015). In that direction, the company will not suffer from the frustration of depending on one product in the market. Still, the company shall also have taken the intellectual grasp to a higher level that may present abundant opportunities to beat the competitive dynamics.

References

Matt, C., Hess, T., & Benlian, A. (2015). Digital transformation strategies. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 57(5), 339-343. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-015-0401-5

Pacheco, D. F., & Dean, T. J. (2015). Firm responses to social movement pressures: A competitive dynamics perspective. Strategic Management Journal, 36(7), 1093-1104. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smj.2273

Perri, M. (2018). Escaping the build trap: How effective product management creates real value. https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=buJ1DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=business+level+strategies+versus+corporate+level+strategies+(2011-2019)&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjin8mriM7lAhUmy4UKHQGrCh4Q6AEIaTAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false