Review of Wharton on Dynamic Competitive Strategy (Hardcover)

Both editors are marketing professors at The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), which is the world's leading business school (BusinessWeek and Financial Times). George Day is well-known for his market-driven strategy, while David Reibstein is one of the leading scholars in the field of competitive marketing strategy. The book is split in 4 parts, each consisting of 3-to-5 stand-alone chapters.

Part I - Understanding Advantages in a Changing Competitive Environment - discusses competitive arenas, competitor analysis, and competitive advantage. The first two chapters expand largely on Michael Porter's (Harvard Business School) frameworks, whereby the other two chapters introduce approaches to include policy and technology trends into the strategic planning process.

The aim of Part II - Anticipating Competitors' Actions - is to get inside the heads of competitors. Chapters 5 and 6 explain the possible use of the game theory within competitive strate!gy and strategic decision making. Chapter 7 builds on these chapters to integrate the economic frame (chapter 5), the behavioral frame (chapter 6), with an coevolution frame. The final chapters of this part introduce frameworks and approaches to understanding competitor response and competitive relationships.

Part III - Formulating Dynamic Competitive Strategies - builds on the first two parts and introduces approaches to designing strategies. It introduces reactive strategies, preemptive strategies, signaling opportunities and uses, competitive positioning, and antitrust constraints (which is increasingly important to companies).

In Part IV - Choosing Among Alternative Competitive Strategies - the three chapters introduce methods and frameworks for choosing the right strategy. Chapter 15, in which conjoint analysis is combined with scenario analysis, is perhaps the most complicated chapter of the book. Part IV also introduces the possibilities to use simulation !tests for analyzing and testing strategies.

Although this book is named "Wharton on Dynamic Competitive Strategy", there are various chapters from other academic institutions. Each chapter is an excellent piece of work and can be read on a stand-alone basis. For beginners in the strategic field I recommend chapters 1 and 2 highly. The book is written in business US-English.



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