CORPORATE STRATEGY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

CORPORATE STRATEGY - Essay Example However, the recent Cola-wars forced the company to change its strategy and look beyond the carbonated drinks. The company has undergone massive restructuring and found healthier alternatives to meet the challenges that globalization posed (Jonash, Koehler, Onassis, 2007). The purpose of a true strategy is to master the business environment by understanding and anticipating the actions and strategies of the competitors. Competition is intense in markets without barriers. Competitive advantage that a firm has must be such that it is difficult to duplicate. In other words, a must have some differentiating factor. According to Greenwald and Kahn (2005) the three factors that generate competitive advantage include customer captivity, proprietary technology and economies of scale. Pepsi’s strategy demonstrates a deep understanding of markets and identifying unmet customer needs, identifying existing and potential internal capabilities that could be used to leverage differentiation, clustering innovation opportunities around a strategic platform and investing in innovation and executing on the strategic growth platforms and the opportunities (Jonash, Koehler, Onassis, 2007). Pepsi has entered emerging markets which have opened up their economies. Thus PepsiCo has been following a differentiation strategy, which according to Johnson and Scholes, seeks to provide products or services unique or different from those of competitors in terms of dimensions widely valued by buyers (Business Strategy, 2002). Organic growth refers to the long-term strategy of the company, apart from enhancing its core strength and vitality (Porter, 1979). Although Pepsi has been concentrating on the core growth but in the past five years it has continues to pursue its strategy of growth through acquisition. As a long-term strategy, PepsicCo had entered the sports drinks market through the