Value Chain Analysis: de Nition

1/22/2020 Value Chain Analysis | SMI
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Value Chain Analysis

Ovidijus Jurevicius | April 25, 2013 Print
De nition
Value chain analysis (VCA) is a process where a rm identi es its primary and support activities
that add value to its nal product and then analyze these activities to reduce costs or increase
differentiation.
Value chain represents the internal activities a rm engages in when transforming inputs into
outputs.
Understanding the tool
Value chain analysis is a strategy tool used to analyze internal rm activities. Its goal is to
recognize, which activities are the most valuable (i.e. are the source of cost or differentiation
advantage) to the rm and which ones could be improved to provide competitive advantage. In
other words, by looking into internal activities, the analysis reveals where a rm’s competitive
advantages or disadvantages are. The rm that competes through differentiation advantage will
try to perform its activities better than competitors would do. If it competes through cost
advantage, it will try to perform internal activities at lower costs than competitors would do.
When a company is capable of producing goods at lower costs than the market price or to
provide superior products, it earns pro ts.
M. Porter introduced the generic value chain model in 1985. Value chain represents all the
internal activities a rm engages in to produce goods and services. VC is formed of primary
activities that add value to the nal product directly and support activities that add value
indirectly.
https://strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/value-chain-analysis.html 1/7
Porter’s Value Chain Model

Primary Activities
Inbound Outbound Marketing

Operations Service P
Logistics Logistics & Sales
R
O
F
Firm Infrastructure Human Resource Management
I
T
Procurement Technology
Support Activities
Although, primary activities add value directly to the production process, they are not
necessarily more important than support activities. Nowadays, competitive advantage mainly
derives from technological improvements or innovations in business models or processes.
Therefore, such support activities as ‘information systems’, ‘R&D’ or ‘general management’ are
usually the most important source of differentiation advantage. On the other hand, primary
activities are usually the source of cost advantage, where costs can be easily identi ed for each
activity and properly managed.
Firm’s VC is a part of a larger industry's VC. The more activities a company undertakes
compared to industry's VC, the more vertically integrated it is. Below you can nd an industry's
value chain and its relation to a rm level VC.
Using the tool
There are two different approaches on how to perform the analysis, which depend on what type
of competitive advantage a company wants to create (cost or differentiation advantage). The
table below lists all the steps needed to achieve cost or differentiation advantage using VCA.
Competitive advantage types
Cost advantage Differentiation advantage
Cost advantage Differentiation advantage
This approach is used when organizations The rms that strive to create superior
try to compete on costs and want to products or services use differentiation
understand the sources of their cost advantage approach. (good examples:
advantage or disadvantage and what factors Apple, Google, Samsung Electronics,
drive those costs.(good examples: Starbucks)
Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Ford,
Toyota)
Step 1. Identify the rm’s primary and Step 1. Identify the customers’ value-
support activities. creating activities.
Step 2. Establish the relative importance Step 2. Evaluate the differentiation
of each activity in the total cost of the strategies for improving customer value.
product. Step 3. Identify the best sustainable
Step 3. Identify cost drivers for each differentiation.
activity.
Step 4. Identify links between activities.
Step 5. Identify opportunities for reducing
costs.
Cost advantage
To gain cost advantage a rm has to go through 5 analysis steps:
Step 1. Identify the rm’s primary and support activities. All the activities (from receiving and
storing materials to marketing, selling and after sales support) that are undertaken to produce
goods or services have to be clearly identi ed and separated from each other. This requires an
adequate knowledge of company’s operations because value chain activities are not organized
in the same way as the company itself. The managers who identify value chain activities have to
look into how work is done to deliver customer value.
Step 2. Establish the relative importance of each activity in the total cost of the product. The
total costs of producing a product or service must be broken down and assigned to each
activity. Activity based costing is used to calculate costs for each process. Activities that are the
major sources of cost or done ine ciently (when benchmarked against competitors) must be
addressed rst.
Step 3. Identify cost drivers for each activity. Only by understanding what factors drive the costs,
managers can focus on improving them. Costs for labor-intensive activities will be driven by
work hours, work speed, wage rate, etc. Different activities will have different cost drivers.
Step 4. Identify links between activities. Reduction of costs in one activity may lead to further
cost reductions in subsequent activities. For example, fewer components in the product design
may lead to less faulty parts and lower service costs. Therefore identifying the links between
activities will lead to better understanding how cost improvements would affect he whole value
chain. Sometimes, cost reductions in one activity lead to higher costs for other activities.
Step 5. Identify opportunities for reducing costs. When the company knows its ine cient
activities and cost drivers, it can plan on how to improve them. Too high wage rates can be dealt
with by increasing production speed, outsourcing jobs to low wage countries or installing more
automated processes.
Differentiation advantage
VCA is done differently when a rm competes on differentiation rather than costs. This is
because the source of differentiation advantage comes from creating superior products, adding
more features and satisfying varying customer needs, which results in higher cost structure.
Step 1. Identify the customers’ value-creating activities. After identifying all value chain
activities, managers have to focus on those activities that contribute the most to creating
customer value. For example, Apple products’ success mainly comes not from great product
features (other companies have high-quality offerings too) but from successful marketing
activities.
Step 2. Evaluate the differentiation strategies for improving customer value. Managers can use
the following strategies to increase product differentiation and customer value:
Add more product features;

Focus on customer service and responsiveness;
Increase customization;
Offer complementary products.
Step 3. Identify the best sustainable differentiation. Usually, superior differentiation and
customer value will be the result of many interrelated activities and strategies used. The best
combination of them should be used to pursue sustainable differentiation advantage.
Example
This example is partially adopted from R. M. Grant’s book ‘Contemporary Strategy Analysis’
p.241. It illustrates the basic VCA for an automobile manufacturing company that competes on
cost advantage. This analysis doesn’t include support activities that are essential to any rm’s
value chain, thus the analysis itself is not complete.
Value Chain Analysis Example
Step 1 - Firm's primary activities
Design and Purchasing Assembly Testing Sales and Distribution and

engineering materials and and marketing dealer support
components quality
control
Step 2 - Toal cost and importance
$164 M $410 M $524 M $10 M $384 M $230 M

less important very important very not important less important
important important
Step 3 - Cost drivers
Number and Order size Scale of Level of Size of Number of

frequency of Average value of plants quality advertising dealers
new models purchases per Capacity targets budget Sales per dealer
Sales per model supplier utilization Frequency Strength of Frequency of
Location of Location of defects existing defects requiring
suppliers of plants reputation repair recalls
Sales
Volume
Step 4 - Links between activities
1. High-quality assembling process reduces defects and costs in quality control and dealer
support activities.
2. Locating plants near the cluster of suppliers or dealers reduces purchasing and
distribution costs.
3. Fewer model designs reduce assembling costs.
4. Higher order sizes increase warehousing costs.
Step 5 - Opportunities for reducing costs
1. Create just one model design for different regions to cut costs in designing and
engineering, to increase order sizes of the same materials, to simplify assembling and
quality control processes and to lower marketing costs.
2. Manufacture components inside the company to eliminate transaction costs of buying
them in the market and to optimize plant utilization. This would also lead to greater
economies of scale.
Sources
1. Grant, R.M. (2010). Contemporary Strategy Analysis. 7th ed. John Wiley & Sons, p. 239-241
2. Wikipedia (2013). Value Chain. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain
3. NetMBA (2010). Value Chain. Available at: http://www.netmba.com/strategy/value-chain/
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About Ovidijus Jurevicius

Ovidijus is the founder of SM Insight and the lead writer since 2013. His interest
and studies in strategic management turned into SM Insight project, the No.1
source on the subject online.
He's been using his knowledge on strategic management and swot analysis to
analyze the businesses for the last 5 years. His work is published in many publications, including
three books.
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1/22/2020 Value Chain Analysis | SMI

Home › Strategy Tools › VCA

Value Chain Analysis

Understanding the tool

Porter’s Value Chain Model

Inbound Outbound Marketing

Using the tool

Competitive advantage types

Cost advantage Differentiation advantage

Cost advantage Differentiation advantage

To gain cost advantage a rm has to go through 5 analysis steps:

Add more product features;

Value Chain Analysis Example

Step 1 - Firm's primary activities

Design and Purchasing Assembly Testing Sales and Distribution and

Step 2 - Toal cost and importance

$164 M $410 M $524 M $10 M $384 M $230 M

Step 3 - Cost drivers

Number and Order size Scale of Level of Size of Number of

Step 4 - Links between activities

Step 5 - Opportunities for reducing costs

About Ovidijus Jurevicius

© 2013-2020 SM Insight. All rights reserved.

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