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  3. Read the article below about five forces affecting strategy, and the questions on the opposite page. For each question(13-18

Read the article below about five forces affecting strategy, and the questions on the opposite page. For each question(13-18

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问题     Read the article below about five forces affecting strategy, and the questions on the opposite page.
    For each question(13-18), mark one letter(A, B, C or D)on your Answer Sheet.
                The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy
    In essence, the job of the strategist is to understand and cope with competition. Often, however, managers define competition too narrowly, as if it occurred only among today’s direct competitors. Yet competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive forces as well: customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. The extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry. They are the threat of new entrants: bargaining power of suppliers: the threat of substitute products or services: bargaining power of buyers and rivalry among existing competitors.
    As different from one another as industries might appear on the surface, the underlying drivers of profitability are the same. The global auto industry, for instance, appears to have nothing in common with the worldwide market for art masterpieces or the heavily regulated health-care delivery industry in Europe. But to understand industry competition and profitability in each of those three cases, one must analyse the industry’s underlying structure in terms of the five forces.
    Understanding the competitive forces, and their underlying causes, reveals the roots of an industry’s current profitability while providing a framework for anticipating and influencing competition(and profitability)over time. A healthy industry structure should be as much a competitive concern to strategists as their company’s own position. Understanding industry structure is also cardinal to effective strategic positioning. As we will see, defending against the competitive forces and shaping them in a company’s favour are crucial to strategy.
    The configuration of the five forces differs by industry. In the market for commercial aircraft, fierce rivalry between dominant producers Airbus and Boeing and the bargaining power of the airlines that place huge orders for aircraft are strong, while the threat of entry, the threat of substitutes, and the power of suppliers are more benign. In the movie theatre industry, the proliferation of substitute forms of entertainment and the power of the movie producers and distributors who supply movies, the critical input, are important. Industry structure drives competition and profitability, not whether an industry is emerging or mature, high tech or low tech, regulated or unregulated.
    The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and become the most important to strategy formulation. The most salient force, however, is not always obvious. For example, even though rivalry is often fierce in commodity industries, it may not be the factor limiting profitability. Low returns in the photographic film industry, for instance, are the result of a superior substitute product— as Kodak and Fuji, the world’s leading producers of photographic film, learned with the advent of digital photography. In such a situation, coping with the substitute product becomes the number one strategic priority.
    Industry structure grows out of a set of economic and technical characteristics that determine the strength of each competitive force. We will examine these drivers in the pages that follow, taking the perspective of an incumbent, or a company already present in the industry. The analysis can be readily extended to understand the challenges facing a potential entrant.
What does "cardinal" mean in the third paragraph?
选项 A、capital
B、essential
C、probable
D、necessary
答案B
解析 题目意为：“第三段中的cardinal一词的意思是什么?”第三段中作者首先表示若能了解竞争作用力，以及影响这些作用力的根本原因，不仅可帮助了解任何一个产业目前获利能力的根源所在，也提供了一个架构，用来预测和影响长期的竞争(和获利能力)。接着该段还提到Understanding industry structure is also cardinal to effective strategicpositioning．As we will see，defending against the competitive forces and shapingthem in a company’s favour are crucial to strategy．即：了解产业结构，也有助于设定有效的策略定位。正如我们所见的，保护公司免受竞争作用力负面的影响，引导那些作用力朝着有利于自家公司的方向发展，是策略中很重要的部分。故B项“关键的，重要的”为正确答案。
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