Porter's five-forces model is a convenient method to assess firms' competitive advantage and strategy. Porter proposes certain strategies to outperform competitors. The recommended strategies are:
- lower cost
- differentiation
- focus

Structure-conduct performance is considered as a classical approach to benchmark the competitive situation of an organization.This paradigm consists of three main elements:
- structure of industries, mainly defined by the degree of concentration, market share, distribution, etc
- conduct of firms, which involves firm's actions in terms of their price setting, advertisement spending, technology etc.
- Performance of firms/industries mainly defined by measures of profitability but which were especially related to the extent of market power.
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The three main causal relationships among these elements in the SCP approach include:

• the impact of structure on conduct;

• the impact of structure on performance; and

• the impact of conduct on performance.

However, among these, the most important relationship is that between the structure of industries and firms' performance. An important refinement to the classical SCP model that can be derived by the findings of this study is that the causal relationship between concentration and performance postulated by SCP propositions would hold in homogeneous rather than heterogeneous industries.