approach for having focused only on the expansion of already existing strategies. Porter even writes, referring to Ansof's ideas, that "...acquisition and vertical integration are not strategies but means of achieving them" to conclude, in the same passage, that "the centerpiece of a frm's strategic plan should be its generic strategy". As can be seen, Porter's generic strategies already explicitly include diferentiation as a strategy for obtaining a competitive advantage. In this strategy, the company invests in its image, technology, technical assistance, distribution, research and development, human resources and market research, with the aim of creating a diferentiating efect that can capture the consumer's attention and, in a second moment, build consumer loyalty. Mintzberg devotes great attention to diferentiation strategies, even 16 establishing that, basically, all strategies involve a greater or lesser degree of diferentiation. Says the author "...an organization distinguishes itself in a competitive marketplace by diferentiating itself in some way - by acting to distinguish its products and services from those of its competitors. We take this to mean that all competitive advantage amounts to one form or another of diferentiation, hence, this becomes the fundamental basis of every businesslevel strategy, and therefore flls the face of the circle we have used to identify the core business." Mintzberg details in an exhaustive manner the diferentiation strategies, indicating that these can be determined by the following factors: price, image, support, quality, design, and also undiferentiation, which the author still considers a strategy of this family. Diferentiation allows, according to the author, to efectively distinguish the core business of a company. The price continues to be the most basic of the diferentiation strategies, but we are mainly interested, given the scope of this work, in the so-called diferentiation by support. Mintzberg says that diferentiation by support (or peripheral, as the author suggests it can also be called) is more substantial than diferentiation by price or by the projected image of the product, but still without having efects on the product itself. In other words, the product will become more appealing (or, at least, it is intended to be) by adding something that, although it does not interfere with the essence of the product, gives it a lateral distinctive capacity. The problem of diferentiation by support had already been addressed by other authors, such as Levitt , who argued that no matter how difcult it is to 17 operate a diferentiation between products by the most classical means, such as price or design, there will always be a way to diferentiate them by support. The author says that "to the potential buyer, a product is a complex cluster of value satisfactions", and not only the intrinsic value of the product. The result will be an "augmented" product, which includes attributes that the consumer will probably never have thought of. Still with the same author, "it is the process, not just the product, that is diferentiated". Mintzberg, 1988, pag. 1-67. 16 Levitt, 1980, pag. 83-91. 17 14
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