Strategic cost management as a way of competitiveness in citrus companies

摘要

The global scene in which citrus companies currently operate, requires gather and manage reliable information about their production process costs. This activity becomes away to achieve competitive advantage in saturated markets. The objective of this paper was to analyse the cost systems that traditionally these companies have used, and to discuss the current validity of them. This analysis makes evident that for these companies it's absolutely necessary to have a cost structure similar to their competitors. Just then their competitive advantage won't be damaged. That's the main reason for using strategic cost management. In this way, activity based cost systems allow companies to identify opportunities to improve their cost structure. Finally, the paper introduces a methodology to implement the activity cost system on a citrus company, underlining the benefits and problems that the implementation could generate.