Value Chain
Value Chain Analysis “Value chain analysis (VCA) is a process where a firm identifies its primary and support activities that add value to its final product and then analyze these activities to reduce costs or increase differentiation.”
The concept comes from business management and was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance 1985
The activity of a diamond cutter can illustrate the difference between cost and the value chain. The cutting activity may have a low cost, but the activity adds much of the value to the end product, since a rough diamond is significantly less valuable than a cut diamond.
“In other words, by looking into internal activities, the analysis reveals where a firm’s competitive advantages or disadvantages are. The firm that competes through differentiation advantage will try to perform its activities better than competitors would do. If it competes through cost advantage, it will try to perform internal activities at lower costs than competitors would do. When a company is capable of producing goods at lower costs than the market price or to provide superior products, it earns profits.
How to perform the analysis?
There are two different approaches on how to perform the analysis, which depend on what type of competitive advantage a company wants to create (cost or differentiation advantage).
1- Cost advantage
To gain cost advantage a firm has to go through 5 analysis steps:
Step 1. Identify the firm’s primary and support activities. All the activities (form receiving and storing materials to marketing, selling and after sales support) that are undertaken to produce goods or services have to be clearly identified and separated from each other. This requires an adequate knowledge of company’s operations because value chain activities are not organized in the same way as the company itself. The managers who identify value chain activities have to look
The concept comes from business management and was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance 1985
The activity of a diamond cutter can illustrate the difference between cost and the value chain. The cutting activity may have a low cost, but the activity adds much of the value to the end product, since a rough diamond is significantly less valuable than a cut diamond.
“In other words, by looking into internal activities, the analysis reveals where a firm’s competitive advantages or disadvantages are. The firm that competes through differentiation advantage will try to perform its activities better than competitors would do. If it competes through cost advantage, it will try to perform internal activities at lower costs than competitors would do. When a company is capable of producing goods at lower costs than the market price or to provide superior products, it earns profits.
How to perform the analysis?
There are two different approaches on how to perform the analysis, which depend on what type of competitive advantage a company wants to create (cost or differentiation advantage).
1- Cost advantage
To gain cost advantage a firm has to go through 5 analysis steps:
Step 1. Identify the firm’s primary and support activities. All the activities (form receiving and storing materials to marketing, selling and after sales support) that are undertaken to produce goods or services have to be clearly identified and separated from each other. This requires an adequate knowledge of company’s operations because value chain activities are not organized in the same way as the company itself. The managers who identify value chain activities have to look