Research and development capabilities may also support the focus strategy, with the creation of brand extensions creating specialist products that will appeal to small or niche markets, for example flavored lactose free macaroni cheese. The pre-emptive strategy may be facilitated through research and development to identify and create new product categories that will enable the organization to gain a first mover advantage (Kotler & Keller, 2011)
These ships provide deep sea cruising as well as coastal or inland cruising of 3 to 18 days to a number of famous and beautiful tourist destinations; including Caribbean, Hawaii, Bermuda, Fiji Islands, Bahamas, Panama Canal, Alaska, Mexican Riviera, South America, New England, Europe, Canada, etc. (Carnival, 2013)
At present, the cruise line industry consists of hundreds of cruise ships operators from all over the world. The global environment impacts these operators in a number of ways (Dowling, 2006)
The strongest purchasing power had always been under possession of the world's largest cruise line corporations like Carnival Corporation, P&O Princess, Royal Caribbean, Star Cruises, etc. These corporations have acquired a number of small cruise line operators in order to grow their fleet size and market share (Gaughan, 2005)
On the other hand, small scale corporations enjoy low costs due to their limited scale of operations. The cruise line industry has been showing tremendous growth due to its increasing popularity among general consumers and huge investments in business expansion projects, mergers, and acquisitions (Klein, 2002)
These corporations have acquired a number of small cruise line operators in order to grow their fleet size and market share (Gaughan, 2005). Besides acquisitions, nine international associations have also decided to form one unified association which will serve as the advocacy leader for all the cruise line corporations worldwide (Stott, 2012)
Secondly, the economic conditions, social, cultural, and demographical patterns, and environmental conditions of target countries impact the consumer behavior and costs of operations of these cruise line corporations. In order to survive in the industry and operate in a profitable and competitive fashion, all small and large scale cruise line corporations have to keep themselves abreast of the changes in the global environment (Woodside & Martin, 2008)
Google also has a very selective culture, which concentrates on choosing only the most qualified candidates. This creates a culture of continual intellectual challenge and a strong focus on shared intelligence and knowledge (Badawy, 2008)
Both companies have invested millions of dollars in contextual search as well, in addition to in-car navigation systems and in the case of Google, their completely automated driverless car (Finkle, 2012). Both are also solidly positioned to lead the next generation of cloud computing as well, with Microsoft investing in their Azure platform and Google with their AppEngine series of online platforms (Cusumano, Gawer, 2002)
The cultural strengths of Google emanate from the highly competitive academic environment of Stanford University, where the two founders graduated less than 20 years ago. The culture at Stanford and now at Google place a high value on solving complex, very challenging theoretical problems with elegant yet powerful algorithms (Dollinger, 2006)
This inevitable track record of success isn't an accident; there is a fierce level of intensity and competitiveness both within the company cultures themselves and across their vast, global ecosystems of suppliers, customers and shareholders. And both of these companies are looking to dominate the lucrative online advertising business models now showing the potential to be multibillion dollar businesses over time (Finkle, 2012)
It also forces a galvanizing effect into groups that have many of the world's smartest people in a given field. Contrary to this approach of unified effort through a shared intelligence base, Microsoft is a fragmented organization that thrives on internal competition and the continual effort to upstage other groups with more innovative and elegant algorithms and programming (Love, 2006)
Microsoft's approach to development reflects a more fixed mindset while Google allows their engineers to invest 20% of their time in new product ideas of their own interest. Google calls this the Rule of 20% and today is responsible for 57% of total revenues (Machlis, 2009)
First, Google is running to keep up with the enterprise market that Microsoft dominates today on the desktop, and is further challenged by how far Microsoft is with its cloud computing platforms including Azure and hosted office automation applications (Finkle, 2012). Second, Microsoft perfected the agile development methodology and has instituted it within its organizational structure; Google still struggles with transforming the sheer volume of ideas generated with the rule of 20% into viable products (Shaw, 2004)
The battle is currently almost balanced. Microsoft and Apple are also equally matched (Betz, 2001)
However, Research in Motion with the BlackBerry and Symbian with Nokia phones have outdone the three effortlessly. The only judgment to be clouded here is the fact that competition depicts the winner and it makes everyone excited (Beyazitoglu, 2010)
The firm also vested much of their time developing programs for video and photo editing like iPhoto, iVideo and iChat (a program for messaging). The company decided to try the cell phone industry and introduced the first ever iPhone (Hill, & Jones, 2010)
In this field, alternative products are growing fast; if Microsoft is to survive, it has to make a major facelift to IE. Apple does not have a great share in this field, but covers up for this sector with the profit from multimedia products (Cushman, & King, 2001)
If this culture is altered with without care, it may have negative effects on the corporate structure. However, this culture is unique in its own way but it is the firm that lacks the support structure, strategy, performance and leadership (Martinez, & Wolverton, 2009)
So to sum the Porter's generic map there could be three strategies 1) Cost Leadership 2) Differentiation 3) Focus industry dependent. (Porter M