Cirque du soleil
How did Cirque du Soleil build and sustain its competitive advantage through 2002?
Many companies choose to build its competitive advantage through: product innovation, operational effectiveness, cost leadership or product differentiation. Cirque du Soleil built its competitive advantage on the foundation of differentiating itself from traditional circus performances. The founder Guy Laliberté used a mix of circus arts and street entertainment in conjunction with 'magical' lighting and original music as the fundamental concept of Cirque du Soleil. This concept led to Cirque du Soleil's competitive advantage that it is not a traditional circus show, but instead a unique performance that captures the elements of circus, dance and opera. The advantage was supported by focusing on the concept and developing a theme that drives the type of acts and music performed. Whereas traditional circus performances just joins different acts together with no purpose.
Soleil sustains its competitive advantage by making both artistic and business decisions that aligns with its objective. For example, the creative teams at Cirque du Soleil went on a week-long retreat to focus on developing a theme, which is the backbone to all the performances at Cirque du Soleil. In addition to developing the theme, Cirque du Soleil omits the use of animals in its performances, thus allowing it to create its own image in the audience's mind that it is not simply a circus performance, it is Soleil. It also differentiates itself from traditional circuses in how they generate their revenue. Cirque du Soleil does not extensively sell concessions and they offer seats at their full face value (no discounts for children, families, etc.). While traditional circuses’ does the opposite. This is to further support the fact that it is not like a traditional circus, and their reasoning for this is to not distract the audience from their 'magical' experience at the Soleil by having people walking around
Many companies choose to build its competitive advantage through: product innovation, operational effectiveness, cost leadership or product differentiation. Cirque du Soleil built its competitive advantage on the foundation of differentiating itself from traditional circus performances. The founder Guy Laliberté used a mix of circus arts and street entertainment in conjunction with 'magical' lighting and original music as the fundamental concept of Cirque du Soleil. This concept led to Cirque du Soleil's competitive advantage that it is not a traditional circus show, but instead a unique performance that captures the elements of circus, dance and opera. The advantage was supported by focusing on the concept and developing a theme that drives the type of acts and music performed. Whereas traditional circus performances just joins different acts together with no purpose.
Soleil sustains its competitive advantage by making both artistic and business decisions that aligns with its objective. For example, the creative teams at Cirque du Soleil went on a week-long retreat to focus on developing a theme, which is the backbone to all the performances at Cirque du Soleil. In addition to developing the theme, Cirque du Soleil omits the use of animals in its performances, thus allowing it to create its own image in the audience's mind that it is not simply a circus performance, it is Soleil. It also differentiates itself from traditional circuses in how they generate their revenue. Cirque du Soleil does not extensively sell concessions and they offer seats at their full face value (no discounts for children, families, etc.). While traditional circuses’ does the opposite. This is to further support the fact that it is not like a traditional circus, and their reasoning for this is to not distract the audience from their 'magical' experience at the Soleil by having people walking around