Once a company has settled on which of the five generic strategies to employ, attention turns to what other strategic actions it can take to complement its choice of a basic competitive strategy. Several decisions have to be made:

• What use to make of strategic alliances and collaborative partnerships.

• Whether to bolster the company's market position via merger or acquisitions.

• Whether to integrate backward or forward into more stages of the industry value chain.

• Whether to outsource certain value chain activities or perform them in-house.

• Whether and when to employ offensive and defensive moves.

• Which of several ways to use the Internet as a distribution channel in positioning the company in the marketplace.

This chapter contains sections discussing the pros and cons of each of the above complementary strategic options. The next-to-last section in the chapter discusses the need or strategic choices in each functional area of a company's business (R&D, production, sales and marketing, finance, and so on) to support its basic competitive approach and complementary strategic moves. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the competitive importance of timing strategic moves—when it is advantageous to be a first-mover and when it is better to be a fast-follower or late-mover.

Figure 6.1 shows the menu of strategic options a company has in crafting a strategy and the order in which the choices should generally be made. The portion of Figure 6.1 below the fi ve generic competitive strategy options illustrates the structure of this chapter and the topics that will be covered.