"The presence of a competitor is always beneficial to a company. Competition forces a company to change itself in ways that improve its practices."
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
It is a controversial and complex of the issue whether the presence of a competitor is always beneficial to a company. People with different backgrounds and experience have various opinions about this issue. Some people point out that the presence of a competitor is always beneficial to a company, while other people assert that the presence of a competitor hampers the development of a company. As far as I am concerned, the presence of a competitor is beneficial to a company under most circumstance. The reasoning of my perspective is shown as follows.
First, competition forces a company to change itself in ways that improve its practice. For example, twenty years ago, most of the enterprises here in China are stated-owned. The monopoly position secures the companies that they will never collapse. Low efficiency is never considered a critical problem. Staffs worked in a relax working environment without any pressure. Since 1990s, lots of foreign competitors entered China, which posed great threaten to these stated-owned companies. Because foreign companies enjoy their high efficient operation styles and their productivities are much higher than the Chinese counterparts. To improve the situation, the stated-owned companies began to learn experience and practices from the foreigner enterprises and made a great achievement.
Second, competition forces a company to provide higher-quality products and services. Examples in this regard are most common in fast-consume products. For instance, when we are enjoying the good service and tasting chicken wings of KFC, we can find that McDonald is providing more attractive promotions. And when we are happy with the promotion of the Shampoo produced by P&G, we can surprisingly find that there is a big discount offered by Unlived.
Admittedly, there are some disadvantages of the presence of a competitor. Many companies will viciously cut down their price, sometimes even below the cost to attract the consumers. In this respect, the objective of a business is distorted and less tax revenue is generated, which negatively affect the overall economy.
To make a conclusion, I proponent that the presence of a competitor in most case is an impetus for the development of the company because it can change the ways of practice and improve quality of the products. But a company should consider the extent to which it changes its practices so that it can make a profit and secure the long-term development of the company. |