Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance; with a new introduction

Explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. describes how a firm actually gains an advantage over its rivals and introduces a new way of understanding what a firm does. The concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into "activities," or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position and value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. Provides for the tools to strategically segment an industry and rigorously assess the competitive logic of diversification.