You may maintain a competitive advantage for small businesses through a differentiated product which needs more focus on customer requirements. Small businesses control the situation by putting indicators of what to be done and what have been done.

True, small business can be competitive through a differentiated product but do they have money create differentiated product that requires lot of R&D.

Leonidas

Went through your paper; could not get anything about competitiveness, it talks about networking.

Identifying priorities at the strategic and operational levels determines the path to success. This helps to build a mentality and culture for the purpose of increasing focus, and removing doubts in the decision-making teams.

Very interesting query@ Babandi Ibrahim Gumel

Not in business but what I normally see in product that attract me include creative advertisement, good packaging, balanced demand and supply, promo and effective customer care services.

Please refer to the "7 Business Growth Strategies for Small Businesses": https://www.cleverism.com/7-business-growth-strategies-for-small-businesses/

Best

True, networking is a part of strategy but we are talking specifically about competitive strategy.

An excellent idea proposed by Porter also called as five forces model that shape the competitive environment where any firm operates and is instrumental in shaping any company's success. This model is implementable for a start-up as well as scale up and time is immaterial to this concept - till the time the business remains competitive by balancing the 5-forces it survives when it cant, it disappears and new competitors take its place. The competitive advantage of the firm is the only trait that helps business retain, grow and sustain its position in the market.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_08.htm

Also find attached report i did on women entrepreneurship on energy value chain that evaluates among other things different business models within energy value chain and what new models are emerging in energy businesses due to disruptions and transformations in energy markets. This research includes field interviews and direct data from women owned businesses in West Africa including in Nigeria where i met both start-up and scale-up businesses and evaluated their successful business models (the report also includes advise how these businesses can access funding from banks, funds and investors by optimizing their business model and operations)

In term environmental competitive strategies, circular economy, green innovation and sustainability reporting are few sustainable management strategies.

very simple..just think like an entrepreneur...it covers all strategies to convert a small business in to Multi billion organization.

One thing that small business can do well without a lot of capital is service. Responding to the customer faster. Being more helpful in the responses. Understanding the customer's problem deeper. This is enough to win over many clients.

First, let us understand that the definition of small business varies from country to country. What is small for a developed nation may be medium business in developing or less developed nation. The competititive strategy would be different in different context. Further, Porter five forces model is not aplicable in many scenarios.

I believe the basics always work for small businesses, since they don't have the extensive resources and capabilities that their bigger contemporaries have. Differentiation can definitely work even in terms of customer service, attention to details (quality) and the fact that if done well they can harness the word of mouth advertising. That is speaking from the perspective of a small business in term of a developing nation, like the one I am based in. Of course the use of IT and social media has offered a whole new dimension. All of which if combined in an innovative way can create unique advantages and can revival bigger businesses in some cases.