Porter's business strategies in Japan

Abstract

Purpose – The Japanese government is promoting a move towards a variety of generic business strategies based on the Porter Prize as a way to regain global competitiveness and end their long economic recession. The purpose of this paper is to report on the current state of Japanese business strategies to a practitioner audience based on the authors' previous academic‐oriented research.Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 101 Japanese respondents was conducted to determine their relative use of Porter's generic business strategies. Examples of implementation are presented to illustrate use of the critical strategies.Findings – The Japanese are using two of Porter's generic strategies, namely cost leadership and differentiation and they are using two variations of Porter's focus strategies.Research limitations/implications – As is typical with all survey research, the convenience sample of organizations used in this survey may not be representative of all Japanese organizations.Practical implications – ...