Part - I

Executive summary

Services touch the lives of every person in this country every day: food services, communication services and emergency services, to name only a few. Our welfare and the welfare of our economy are now based on services. The activities of manufacturing and agriculture will always be necessary, but we can eat only so much food and we can use only so many goods. Services, however, are largely experiential, and we will always have a limitless appetite for them.

An effective competitive strategy is particularly important for services firms because they compete in an environment where there are relatively low barriers to entry. Consequently, the firms are faced with new competition. In this paper we first look at the strategic service concept as a blueprint for implementing the service. Our discussion then turns to the economic nature of competition in the services sector. The fragmented nature of the services industries populated with many small - to medium sized firms suggests a rich environment for the budding entrepreneur.

The three generic competitive strategies of overall cost leadership, differentiation and focus are used to outline examples. Because of the transferability of concepts among service firms, strategies that are successful in one industry may find application in firms seeking a competitive advantage in other industry.

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* The author is presently studying at NITIE