In hypercompetitive business markets, the ability to develop unique co
mpetitive advantages often spells the difference between corporate suc
cess and failure. Overlaying segmentation with multiattribute analysis
yields a competitive advantage matrix that provides perspectives for
uncovering new competitive advantages. The scheme accomplishes this by
systematically assessing variances among ideal, perceived, and actual
ratings on key attributes for the company's own brand and for each ma
jor competitive brand. Flowing directly from this analysis is a set of
seven potential strategic alternatives for building competitive advan
tage. Guidelines for developing and prioritizing the strategies are in
cluded. Regularly applying the approach over time cart also yield buil
t-in measures for evaluating the success of previously implemented com
petitive advantage strategies. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.