Sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) is a marketing term that is also commonly referred to as unique selling proposition (USP). Once determined, the SCA is used as a filter for allocating time and money to the strategic issues that will best position your company in the market place.
Determining the SCA for your company requires a good understanding of your customer’s needs and preferences. Your competitive advantage arises from those activities which provide high value to your customers and for which you have a strong ability to beat your competitors. Examples of your SCA might be rapid order fulfillment, reputation for high quality, perceived product value, patented process, etc.
A true competitive advantage must be:
- sustainable,
- hard to copy,
- unique,
- superior to the competition, and
- applicable in most situations.
Once identified, your SCA can become a filter for priority ranking the key issues in your organization.
In today’s fast changing and competitive world, very few SCA’s can be sustained for long periods of time. Regular checks of your SCA will ensure that you keep in step with strategies and your market environment. We suggest you do a formal review of your SCA at least annually.
There are numerous ways to win in your market place. Have you identified your SCA?
