sustainable competitive advant

Competitive advantage is something that you can do better than your competitors.

Sustainable competitive advantage is a competitive advantage that cannot easily be copied.

Low price may be a competitive advantage but the competitors may also lower their price. Therefore, prices can easily change overnight and this is not a sustainable competitive advantage because it can easily be copied and cannot last very long.

Reputation is a sustainable competitive advantage and takes many, many years to develop. Examples are University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong, which have very high reputation. Though they are not commercial firms, they have an advantage over other universities to compete for funding from the government.

The lock-in of customers by Microsoft is a sustainable competitive advantage. I have to buy Microsoft Office because every computer runs on Microsoft Windows.

High-quality product is also a sustainable competitive advantage. Examples are Haagen-Dazs ice-cream and CSL 1010.

Other sources of sustainable competitive advantages are company culture, skills and training of staff, and so forth.

My conclusion is
Simply having competitive advantages over others is not enough.
They have to be sustainable, i.e. last longer and cannot easily be copied


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