Agree or Disagree?

Discussion: Strategy As Action

Let's start by exploring the notion of strategy as action.In the context of strategy, what specifically does this mean? Please emphasize the following concepts in your answer: market structure, collusion, and the prisoner's dilemma. emphasize other elements of our comprehensive model of global competitive dynamics.

Answer: The textbook describes strategy as action as the essence of interaction. These interactions are actions and reactions that lead firms to competitive advantage within the marketplace. It's an interesting point the author makes that in business it's possible to beat competition without killing the competition. It's described as both "war and peace." I can think of the fast-food industry as an example of companies who formulate strategy as action.

According to USA Today, the chicken sandwich war was in August 2019 after Popeyes launched its New Orleans-style fried chicken sandwich. The chain then started a viral Twitter feud with Chick-fil-A and other restaurants (Tyko, 2021). The action of releasing a product caused another company to interact (response) and engage competitive interaction which ultimately leads to performance. I would categorize this industry as monopolistic competition. All firms produce a differentiated product, have low barriers to entry and close substitutes. While a burger is a burger, firms differentiate themselves by having different cooking styles such as flame-broiled, 100% USDA beef, etc.

Investopedia defines collusion as a non-competitive, secret, and sometimes illegal agreement between rivals which attempts to disrupt the market's equilibrium. The act of collusion involves people or companies which would typically compete against one another, but who conspire to work together to gain an unfair market advantage. (Young, 2020). Collusion may also occur between firms who do business with one another. While there not be any hard evidence behind it, why is it that companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the only largely used social media websites? Why is it that companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google get to decide to cut off other competing social media companies? It is no accident that these companies have become the oligarchs that they are today. By design or by default, these are now too big to fail and have a handle on just about all of our information.