<p>The hotel industry in Stockholm is characterized by intense competition, and within the next couple of years the construction of a number new hotels is planed. As the number of hotels in Stockholm increase, the competition will increase and the importance of having well functioning strategies will become vital. The purpose of this essay is to examine how two hotels within the hotel industry in Stockholm experience and handle the competition. The two hotels that are included in the study are Clarion Hotel Stockholm and Scandic Continental. The essay derives from models and theories that are related to marketing and competition. Our study shows that the perception of competition varies, in addition to the fact that choice of competitive strategies varies dependent on the hotel’s concept. The hotel industry in Stockholm is divided into different areas, depending on which area hotels choose to serve the competitive environment will differ. A hotel with a specific niche will limit its competitors to a narrow number that operate within the same niche. The results of our study show evidence that the competition in the hotel industry in Stockholm is divided, and that this divisional competition will continue to increase as the industry develops. The building of new hotels in the next couple of years will aid the progress of a possible collaboration between the hotels in Stockholm in the future, and thus attract larger meetings and events.</p> / <p>Hotellbranschen i Stockholm kommun präglas av intensiva konkurrensförhållanden, och inom de nästkommande två åren planeras tio nya hotellbyggen i Stockholm kommun. I takt med att nyetableringarna ökar intensifieras konkurrensen mellan aktörerna och det blir allt viktigare att för aktörerna att hitta passande strategier för att hantera den rådande konkurrensen. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur två aktörer inom hotellbranschen i Stockholm kommun uppfattar och hanterar konkurrensen. De aktörer som ingår i undersökningen är Clarion Hotel Stockholm samt Scandic Continental. De teorier och modeller som uppsatsen har utgått ifrån är relaterade till marknadsföring och konkurrens. Vår studie visar att uppfattningen om konkurrens, samt valet av strategier, skiljer sig åt beroende på vilken inriktning hotellen väljer. Hotellbranschen i Stockholm kommun är indelad i olika inriktningar och beroende på vilken inriktning man som aktör väljer att betjäna möts man av skilda konkurrensförhållanden. Ett hotell som väljer en specifik inriktning begränsar sina konkurrenter till ett få antal som är verksamma inom samma område. Resultaten visar tydliga tecken på en splittrad konkurrens inom Stockholm kommun samt att denna splittring troligtvis kommer att fortsätta öka i takt med utvecklingen av branschen. De nyetableringar som kommer att ske de nästkommande åren kommer att underlätta för ett möjligt samarbete mellan hotellen i Stockholm kommun för att locka till sig olika möten, kongresser och evenemang.</p>

Since the mid-eighties, progress in European economic integration has contributed to changing conditions for the conduct of business in many sectors of the economies. Such is the case in Sweden, whose commitment to the formal integration process also has changed in recent years, from a free trade arrangement (EFTA) via the European Economic Area (The EFTA states' affiliation to the European Union's Internal Market), to membership in the European Union. A theoretical point of departure for this thesis was the finding that although economic integration entails strategic consequences for firms, studies treating economic integration with a general business strategy perspective were rare. Hence, the main purpose has been to achieve knowledge about the European Internal Market's strategic consequences for Swedish firms, with the focus on manufacturing SMEs. Empirically, it is examined how integration has been experienced in firms through two questionnaires, sent in earlier and later stages of the formal integration process. Although the responses indicate a limited impact from the Internal Market, they present some arguments for an increased internationalisation. There are, however, reasons to believe that factors other than political initiatives were behind such a development. In the theoretical part of this thesis, obstacles to international competition, and the corresponding competitive advantages, are seen as being central for understanding integration effects as well as for the possibilities to respond to them. An essential distinction is made between different types of obstacles, based on origin or main causes. One or other of these categories may be crucial for a firm when defending a strategic market position, or may hinder the firm from competing in other markets. Furthermore, obstacles in the different categories are in principle influenced by integration measures to a varying degree, and the survey indicated that the type of obstacle that is primarily influenced by integration measures is the one with the least perceived influence on firms' competitive strength. In the last part of the thesis, and with several different points of departure - trade and integration theory, international business, strategic management, and the Internal Market's institutional framework - a model for analysis of integration effects in business strategy terminology is developed and presented. The model is constituted by a geographic dimension and a dimension concerning the product and distribution in a broad sense. For firms with strategic positions which are affected according to the analysis, two principal strategic responses are discussed: to re-establish former competitive advantages or to adapt to the new situation by re-orienting the business. / digitalisering@umu

Develops the cultural and creative industry is the main policy of the Taiwan government in recent years. Entrepreneurial as cultural creative industry in different stages, what an opportunity, resources and entrepreneurial team to influence an entrepreneurial activity, this is a main topic discussing in this research. This research topic¡¦s is focus on an opportunities, resources and entrepreneurial team. To perform a new business that should existence the natures both of dynamic and complexity. Furthermore, to had sort out three issues within internal factors, this expect to awareness what the differences between with opportunity, resources and entrepreneurial team through this research as well as tries to understand the entrepreneurial team how to respond it when opportunity and resources change in the different entrepreneurial processes. And other, this research had been analyzed an entrepreneurial team how to influence by these factors. The results obtain from research that social culture, industrial environment and technological progress still influencing in the first stage of entrepreneurial processes obviously. Under the social culture's vicissitude, people's life accomplishment had been promoted; the most of people are pursue to balancing between the life and culture. Thus, this makes the industrial environment have to the change, in other, the traditional creators should out of box as well, and establish a model of culture creativity. Entrepreneurial processes within gestation stage, it had emphasis the entrepreneurial team's composition and characteristic. Prior knowledge and shared values have influence obviously in this stage. It can be explain that entrepreneurial team's composition has complementary or similar in the prior knowledge. Let the members of entrepreneurial team no matter can complement one another in the communication or the specialty. Because they can be share their values with other into the team members, to conduct and policy-making standard. It should reduce the nonessential conflict. Finally, entrepreneurial processes within infancy stage that can explanation as the competitive advantages of entrepreneur from intangible assets. Intangible assets are from philosophy, annotation technique and style of creator. In this way, creator's intangible asset is not the tangible asset or the organizational capability can substitute.

Insurance is an essential concept that has long been recognized by human beings. The insurance market in Taiwan has also been developing since the revolution. Even though the economy is under recession at the turn of the twenty-first century, insurance industry in Taiwan keeps growing steadily. It indicates that more and more people are concerned about the insurance issues. Since the insurance industry is in the service sector, it is realized that insurance companies cannot gain lifetime value of customers and operate continuously without taking care of good customer relations. In addition, under the varying information technology environment, customer relationship management (CRM) has to be adjusted accordingly in order to enhance customer relations by faster and more complete services. This research studies how insurance companies should react to the emerging web technology environments by adapting their CRM to e-CRM and M-CRM. It is also desired to analyze the resulting competitive advantages of insurance companies by using five forces model and SWOT analysis. A leading case in the insurance industry is investigated as a preliminary study. The results show that the leading company is able and willing to invest in information technology to support CRM entirely. It, therefore, provides a good chance for this company to keep the edge over others under electronic and mobile environments. The advantages of implementing e-CRM and M-CRM include the enhancement of service quality, facilitation of operation efficiency, and all-inclusive provision of customer services. Although the company still suffers from some weakness and threats, its positive attitude to cope with those challenges keeps the damage minimal. We conclude this study by proposing that for insurance companies, employing appropriate e-CRM and M-CRM can improve competitive advantages and thus gain customer profitability. Keyword: e-Business, M-Business, Customer Relationship Management, Competitive advantages, Five Forces Model, SWOT Analysis

China, as a leading apparel manufacturer and exporter in the world possesses significant market potential for growth because of its growing demand power. Given that low labor costs are increasingly no longer one of the competitive advantages held by Chinese apparel manufacturers, developing powerful and profitable globally recognized apparel brands may be the way to obtain sustainable success for firms in the Chinese apparel industry. Accordingly, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) will be applied as a theoretical framework to discuss the competitiveness of a nation’s apparel industry. Brand management, satisfying exacting domestic demands, and stimulating marketing competition will be integrated. Using Porter’s theoretical foundation for demand conditions, a proposed model of fashion sophistication is introduced and a measurement survey utilizing Gen-Y Chinese fashion consumers is assessed. Furthermore, the research on Gen-Y consumers’ fashion sophistication discovered their specialized characteristics which represent exacting domestic demand for apparel products.

China, as a leading apparel manufacturer and exporter in the world possesses significant market potential for growth because of its growing demand power. Given that low labor costs are increasingly no longer one of the competitive advantages held by Chinese apparel manufacturers, developing powerful and profitable globally recognized apparel brands may be the way to obtain sustainable success for firms in the Chinese apparel industry. Accordingly, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) will be applied as a theoretical framework to discuss the competitiveness of a nation’s apparel industry. Brand management, satisfying exacting domestic demands, and stimulating marketing competition will be integrated. Using Porter’s theoretical foundation for demand conditions, a proposed model of fashion sophistication is introduced and a measurement survey utilizing Gen-Y Chinese fashion consumers is assessed. Furthermore, the research on Gen-Y consumers’ fashion sophistication discovered their specialized characteristics which represent exacting domestic demand for apparel products.

Information security technologists and business scholars are motivated by a desire to understand how and to what extent the application of IT within enterprise systems leads to improved and secured organizational performance. An effective relationship between business and IT professionals is a primary determinant of success in gaining business advantage through the enterprise system. As business innovation has relied increasingly on partnerships between business and IT professional, a different perspective of how IT professionals view their organizational contributions was needed for organizations to remain competitive. Business knowledge is essential if IT professionals are to create linkages with other organizational units and have a wider perspective about business objectives, thus achieving fit between IT and organizational strategies. Organizations have started responding to this challenge by demanding more business acumen in their IT staff. The focus of this study is on the knowledge that is beyond that of independent business and IT only domain knowledge of information security. Therefore, technical areas of knowledge, such as hardware and software, all of which are closely associated with IT skills, are not discussed in this thesis. This is not to declare that such knowledge is not important. Clearly technical knowledge is part of the IT professional's overall information security technology expertise, but this study is about the organization proficiency of business and the IT professional, and is therefore interested in what enables business and IT professionals to apply their business domain and technical knowledge in ways that are beneficial to the organization and to act cooperatively with their customers and business partners. The purpose of this study is to employ the triangulation method to identify the theoretical links and empirically examine the association between business and IT perspective of information security. An important contribution of this study is the identification of business and IT perspectives on information security technology. By establishing the link between business and IT, the study focuses and evaluates Virtual Private Network (VPN) as an information security technology to find out if VPN can secure and gain competitive advantage by partisan business process and organization performance. This study articulates distinctive characteristics of Virtual Private Network and management processes that extend the range of applicability across diverse business segments. It distinguishes between business and IT and explains why the exploitation of a complementary set of related information security entities (such as VPN) across multiple functions create competitive vi advantages even across a diverse set of businesses that have limited opportunity to exploit business process and organization performance. The most important direct predictor of this study is a high level of communication between business and IT. However, one cannot mandate meaningful communication between individuals. IT people have to earn the right to play a meaningful role in management forums. Based on the findings from this study, one important way for an IT person to be heard is for him/her to devote the time necessary to create competitive advantage and develop shared domain knowledge, the most influential construct in the research model. An IT person needs to understand the leverage points of the industry, the history and current issues of the business units, and to learn to apply business oriented objectives in the application of technology to business problems. This change in view would help focus their attention on security technology and ideas that could produce the most benefit and create competitive advantage, rather than those that offer the most technical promise.

Este trabalho analisa o posicionamento estratégico de duas grandes redes pertencentes ao ramo varejista de bens duráveis: Lojas Colombo e Magazine Luiza, no intuito de identificar através de informações coletadas em entrevistas, reportagens das principais revistas e jornais, como estas empresas buscam obter vantagens competitivas num cenário altamente concorrido como o atual. A análise usa como referencial teórico as idéias de posicionamento estratégico de M. Porter e a exploração de vantagens de custos e benefícios para obtenção de vantagens competitivas e melhor posicionamento no mercado. O referencial escolhido mostrou-se bastante útil para entender as escolhas de estratégia das empresas estudadas. As análises realizadas com base em informações obtidas levaram ao entendimento que as Lojas Colombo têm como foco de atuação a competição por benefícios, optando pela diferenciação. Já o Magazine Luiza tem um posicionamento estratégico voltado para a competição por custos, considerando os mesmos critérios de avaliação para as duas empresas. / This paper examines strategic positioning applied to two well-established rival Brazilian companies that belong to retail trade market of durable goods. We collected information from newspapers and magazines in order to identify how those companies obtain competitive advantages in such a dynamic today’s market scenario. Our analysis is based on M. Porter's ideas of strategic positioning and competitive advantages in cost and benefits, focusing on how to achieve a better position in the local market. Porter's theory turned out to be the best choice for understanding these company approaches. As a result we found out different initiatives between the two studied chains. The first one, called Lojas Colombo, focuses on competitive benefits while the second, called Magazine Luiza, establishes competitive costs. We considered the same assessment criteria for both companies.

Este trabalho analisa o posicionamento estratégico de duas grandes redes pertencentes ao ramo varejista de bens duráveis: Lojas Colombo e Magazine Luiza, no intuito de identificar através de informações coletadas em entrevistas, reportagens das principais revistas e jornais, como estas empresas buscam obter vantagens competitivas num cenário altamente concorrido como o atual. A análise usa como referencial teórico as idéias de posicionamento estratégico de M. Porter e a exploração de vantagens de custos e benefícios para obtenção de vantagens competitivas e melhor posicionamento no mercado. O referencial escolhido mostrou-se bastante útil para entender as escolhas de estratégia das empresas estudadas. As análises realizadas com base em informações obtidas levaram ao entendimento que as Lojas Colombo têm como foco de atuação a competição por benefícios, optando pela diferenciação. Já o Magazine Luiza tem um posicionamento estratégico voltado para a competição por custos, considerando os mesmos critérios de avaliação para as duas empresas. / This paper examines strategic positioning applied to two well-established rival Brazilian companies that belong to retail trade market of durable goods. We collected information from newspapers and magazines in order to identify how those companies obtain competitive advantages in such a dynamic today’s market scenario. Our analysis is based on M. Porter's ideas of strategic positioning and competitive advantages in cost and benefits, focusing on how to achieve a better position in the local market. Porter's theory turned out to be the best choice for understanding these company approaches. As a result we found out different initiatives between the two studied chains. The first one, called Lojas Colombo, focuses on competitive benefits while the second, called Magazine Luiza, establishes competitive costs. We considered the same assessment criteria for both companies.

p. 1-89 / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2013-03-06T20:52:37Z No. of bitstreams: 1 5555.pdf: 995786 bytes, checksum: b17901d840a7cbe68306600d0056213f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Tatiana Lima(tatianasl@ufba.br) on 2013-04-05T17:00:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 5555.pdf: 995786 bytes, checksum: b17901d840a7cbe68306600d0056213f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-04-05T17:00:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5555.pdf: 995786 bytes, checksum: b17901d840a7cbe68306600d0056213f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / As práticas de gestão organizacional nos últimos anos apresentaram mudanças consideráveis as quais foram provocadas, em boa parte, pelos altos índices de competição atual e pela velocidade das mudanças do macroambiente econômico, político e social. Algumas dessas mudanças levaram as empresas a revisarem seus limites de atuação organizacional e reestruturarem seu modelo de gestão. Considerando este contexto de mudanças e re-ordenamento das fronteiras organizacionais, esta dissertação procura identificar quais são as vantagens competitivas dos modelos de gestão de frota própria e terceirizada. A questão chave desta dissertação é testada e analisada com base no contexto teórico da Vantagem Competitiva e da Economia dos Custos de Transação. Os pressupostos teóricos são analisados através de um caso empírico que permeia a utilização dos dois modelos aqui analisados. Os resultados obtidos indicam uma vertente com duas linhas distintas de gestão sob a logística de entrega: uma ligada às empresas que acompanharam o processo de mudança e hoje investem numa estrutura de gestão partilhada, com frota própria e terceirizada; e outra às empresas tradicionalistas que, em função de alguns paradigmas do passado, optaram por manter e gerir uma frota própria. A análise dos modelos de gestão aponta para as vantagens oferecidas por cada um e para uma contextualização do seu uso partilhado. Verifica-se que, na prática, o uso correto e eficaz da terceirização de frota tem uma relação direta com a correta interpretação das competências essenciais da empresa. Por fim, o maior interesse desta dissertação é entender de que forma os modelos de gestão de frota podem contribuir para a criação de vantagem competitiva das distribuidoras de bebidas e em que contexto cada um deles deve ser utilizado. / Salvador