Fedex Competive Postion

2 Pages 389 Words

The understanding of your competitive position in the market and knowing your strengths and weaknesses can be a powerful tool for your company's strategist. With this information they are able to align their companies resources in a way that provides a competitive advantage. With up to date information a strategist can help a company respond quickly when opportunities present themselves in the market. If you do not know what you and your competitors are good and bad at, it will make it difficult to not only plan, but to be able to react quickly to the market changes.

A competitive strength for FedEx has been the branding and reorganization of the business structure to better serve the needs of the customers. Before 2000 FedEx had multiple brands and separate sales forces under the FDX umbrella. Today they have a single brand and sales force with a standardized infrastructure to support them. Another strength comes from being a pioneer in the express delivery business. They have been in the business for close to 30 years now and have a blue chip brand identity. Another competitive strength has been the understanding and commitment they have made to technology as it relates to the logistics business. By applying IT to the business, FedEx has been able to jump in front of most of the competition. This has been a necessary investment since all transportation companies now depend greatly on technology as customer's expectations have increased. Without this IT investment FedEx would not be a market leader.

A competitive weakness in the past has been the lack of a ground structure to support their home delivery business. Without this they have been struggling to achieve the level of success they have hoped for. Recently they have reached an agreement with U.S. Postal Service that has provided them placement of up to 10,000 FedEx Drop Boxes outside U.S. Post Offices. Another weakness has been their unwillingness to outsource aspects of th...