Top Business Strategy Interview Questions
Business Strategy Interview Questions and Answers List
1. Why is game theory useful in developing competitive strategy?
A) Game theory emphasizes short-term tactics to be employed in competitive strategies rather than a long-term strategy.
B) Game theory is about thinking how competitors will respond in both the short term and the long term.
C) Games assume competition between different players so game theory is especially useful in describing how competition occurs.
D) Given the inter-dependence of competitors, game theory helps an understanding of how the decisions of one competitor affects upon another.
Ans: B
2. Which of the following explanations best defines the meaning of hyper-competitive strategies?
A) Hyper-competitive strategies are about how to compete in fast changing business environments.
B) Innovation in terms of bases of competitive strategy
C) Hyper-competitive strategies are about building bases of sustainable differentiation.
D) Hyper-competitive strategies acknowledge the bases of competitive advantage may not be sustainable and that disruption of the status quo may be important.
Ans: D
3. Lock-in, as described by Hax and Wilde, is achieved when?
A) An organization achieves a proprietary position in its industry.
B) Customers are tied into long-term contracts.
C) An industry is dominated by a major player.
D) Customer preferences are recorded in a CRM database.
Ans: A
4. What is meant by focused differentiation?
A) Concentrating on a particular feature of a product or service to achieve differentiation
B) Concentrating on differentiation as the primary means of achieving competitive advantage
C) Providing a high-perceived value service or product to a selected market segment, this justifies a substantial price premium.
D) Simultaneously seeking to achieve differentiation and a price lower than that of competitors
Ans: B,C
5. How might an organization sustain and win a price war?
A) By having a lower cost structure
B) By cross-subsidizing one business from another
C) By having “deeper pockets” to fund short to medium term losses
D) All of the above
Ans: D
6. Competitive advantage based on differentiation derives from?
A) Being the lowest cost producer in the industry and offering the lowest prices
B) Having the broadest range of different goods and services in the industry
C) Having processes and systems, which are different from competitors
D) Offering products or services, which offer different benefits from competitors’ and which are valued by buyers.
Ans: C
7: The equivalent to competitive advantage in public services is?
A) Outsourcing
B) Best value
C) Superior services
D) Best practice.
Ans: B
8. Three ways of sustaining competitive advantage are?
A) Price-based strategies, differentiation, and diversification
B) Price-based strategies, differentiation, and lock-in
C) Change, adaptation and efficiency.
D) Monopoly, cartel and market sharing
Ans: B
9. Sustainable differentiation is most likely in the following circumstances?
A) Where the bases of differentiation are valuable to the buyer
B) Where the bases of the differentiation strategy are difficult for competitors to imitate
C) Where it is difficult for buyers to shift their buying allegiances
D) All of the above
Ans: D
10. A differentiation strategy is defined as?
A) Higher quality products or services than competitors
B) Innovation of products or services greater than competition
C) Providing different products or services, which draw upon competences or resources, which competitors do not have.
D) The provision of products or services that offer benefits different from those of competitors and that are widely valued by buyers.
Ans: D
11. A successful hybrid strategy is:
A) Impossible to achieve in practice
B) A strategy, which seeks to provide high-perceived value justifying a substantial price premium usually to a selected market segment
C) The period of time when an organization is changing its strategy
D) A strategy, which seeks simultaneously to achieve differentiation and a price lower than that of competitors
Ans: D
12. The fundamental requirement for a successful price led strategy is:
A) Reducing the cost base of the organization
B) The lowest cost base of competing organizations
C) Prices lower than competition.
D) Lower quality products or services than competition.
Ans: B