Porter's Model of Generic Strategies for Competitive Advantage

Porter suggested four "generic" business strategies that could be adopted in order to gain competitive advantage. The strategies relate to the extent to which the scope of a business' activities are narrow versus broad and the extent to which a business seeks to differentiate its products.

The short video below provides an overview of Porter's Generic Strategies and there are some additional study notes below the video. 

The key strategic challenge for most businesses is to find a way of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over the other competing products and firms in a market.

A competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices.

The four strategies are summarised in the figure below: