英譯中--謝絕機(jī)器
A firm such as Chevron in petroleum spans wide segments of the value chain in which it operates,from oil exploration to service stations,but it does not span the entire chain.Fifty percent of the crude oil it refines comes from other producers,and more than one third of the oil it refines is sold through other retail outlets.Also,Chevron is not in the auto business at all,the major user of gasoline.More narrowly,a firm such as Maxus Energy is only in the oil exploration and production business.The Limited Stores are big "downstream" in retail outlets but own no manufacturing facilities.Reebok is a famous shoe brand,but the firm owns very few retail outlets.Reebok does,however,own its factories.
Though the value chain concept has been around for more than 10 years,the strategic power of this concept has not been well articulated.Based on an extensive literature search,we were not able to find even one complete,empirically derived value chain for a firm.There is a clear need to begin to document real world examples of how the value chain framework provides strategic insights that are unlikely to emerge from other frameworks.We believe it is important to begin to bring this perspective into the domain of managerial accounting.This paper is an attempt to begin to fill this need.
STRATEGIC POWER OF THE VALUE CHAIN ANALYSIS--THE BASICS
Whether or not a firm can develop and sustain differentiation and/or cost advantage depends fundamentally on the configuration of its value chain relative to the value chain configuration of each of its competitors.We believe Porter [1985] is correct when he argues that competitive advantage in the marketplace ultimately derives from providing better customer value for equivalent cost or equivalent customer value for a lower cost.From this perspective,value chain analysis is essential to determine exactly where in the firm's segment of the chain--from design to distribution--customer value can be enhanced or costs lowered.As argued by Shank [ 1989],ignoring linkages upstream from the firm as well as downstream is just too restrictive a perspective.