AN APPLICATION OF ‘BUILDING BLOCKS OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE’ APPROACH TO THE U.S. CEREAL MARKET LEADERS

Abstract

In the strategic management field, the study of building and sustaining competitive advantage for businesses has been one of the most important research areas. Although there are various attempts to explain the processes of building and sustaining competitive advantage, it has continued to be a poorly defined and operationalized construct. This paper focuses on the application of a strategic analytical approach, “Building Blocks of Competitive Advantages”, to analyze and compare the sources of competitive advantage for two market leaders in the U.S. breakfast cereal industry, Kellogg’s and General Mills. Various literature were reviewed in order to gain an understanding of the industry, and the roles played by these companies. As expected, Kellogg’s and General Mills have similar sources of competitive advantage, however, these companies have shown different ways of developing competitive advantage. This study was carried out in an attempt to stimulate efforts and provide direction on the conceptual development of the sources for competitive advantage. Keywords: Building blocks of competitive advantage, Sources of competitive advantage, Internal strengths and weaknesses, U.S. Breakfast Cereal Market, Kellogg’s, General Mills.