Competitive Strategies in House-Building Industry - Analysis of St. Petersburg Market
Lehti, Elina (2009)
Kuvaus
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Tiivistelmä
Competition in the house-building industry of St. Petersburg is intensive. During recent years, demand for new dwellings has increased. For constructors to succeed in the business, they need to offer attractive product concepts in order to satisfy customer demands as compared to their competitors. It is important to gather information about competitors’ actions, as this knowledge of competing business strategies can influence one’s own strategic decision making.
The main goal of the study was to clarify what kind of competitive strategies, as classified by Porter, constructors implement in a specific area in St. Petersburg and especially at the customer interface. The focus was on the economy and comfort classes of constructions. The elite and business classes were excluded from the study. To form a concept of competitive strategies, competing marketing strategies had to be first analysed and then compared. For the marketing strategies were selected the product and its quality, price and advertising, as they influence on the forming of the product sold i.e. an apartment. Moreover, country-specific characteristics were studied in order to enable the analysis of strategies within the right context. Finally eight potential competitors were analysed and the information was gathered mainly from the adverts and internet pages.
The results indicate that the analysable area consists of two cost-leaders, four differentiators, one focuser and one building object which is stuck in the middle. All the building objects have rather different marketing strategies as their product characteristics, quality levels and prices vary greatly between each other. Conversely, diverse advertising possibilities have been limited as they resemble each other, and competitive advantages are clearly highlighted only in some adverts. By analysing internal competition competitive weapons of the cases were discovered and noticed that the possibilities for differentiation are favourable.
The main goal of the study was to clarify what kind of competitive strategies, as classified by Porter, constructors implement in a specific area in St. Petersburg and especially at the customer interface. The focus was on the economy and comfort classes of constructions. The elite and business classes were excluded from the study. To form a concept of competitive strategies, competing marketing strategies had to be first analysed and then compared. For the marketing strategies were selected the product and its quality, price and advertising, as they influence on the forming of the product sold i.e. an apartment. Moreover, country-specific characteristics were studied in order to enable the analysis of strategies within the right context. Finally eight potential competitors were analysed and the information was gathered mainly from the adverts and internet pages.
The results indicate that the analysable area consists of two cost-leaders, four differentiators, one focuser and one building object which is stuck in the middle. All the building objects have rather different marketing strategies as their product characteristics, quality levels and prices vary greatly between each other. Conversely, diverse advertising possibilities have been limited as they resemble each other, and competitive advantages are clearly highlighted only in some adverts. By analysing internal competition competitive weapons of the cases were discovered and noticed that the possibilities for differentiation are favourable.