Answer to Question 1
The different types of business-level strategies are:
1. Low-cost business-level strategy: It is a plan whereby an organization produces low-priced goods and services for all customer groups.
2. Differentiation business-level strategy: It is a plan whereby an organization produces high-priced, quality products aimed at particular market segments.
3. Focus strategy: Focus strategy involves specializing in one segment of a market and focusing all of the organization's resources on that segment.
Answer to Question 2
A competitor can easily imitate another organization's structure, but it is very difficult for a competitor to imitate another organization's culture, for culture is embedded in the day-to-day interactions of functional personnel. Culture is very difficult to control and manage, let alone imitate or copy, so a company that has an effective culture has an important source of competitive advantage.
The coordination abilities that stem from an organization's culture emerge gradually and are a product of many factors: an organization's property rights system, its structure, its ethics, and the characteristics of its top-management team. Because these factors can be combined in many different ways, reproducing another organization's culture is difficult.