| Abstract: | The study was conducted on two samples private higher education institutes in Addis Ababa on which they use cost, flexibility, delivery, and quality that enable them to ensure wining competitive advantage(s). Institutes which perform similar activities have a tendency to engage in competition by making one or more variables better than others. Customers also have a wider chance to shift from one institute to the other which serves better. Under such conditions, institutes strive to develop competitive positions to provide unique or better products than competitors. Comparative study is used to compare the competitive advantages of the two institutes using cost, flexibility, delivery, and quality. Purposive sampling technique is used to select the three categories of respondents, students, instructors, and administrative staffs; from both institutes and also simple random sampling technique is used to select sample students and instructors through lottery method. Purposive sampling technique is used to select sample administrative staffs that have a link to academic issues. Both primary and secondary data source used as sores of data collection. The study use questioner’s Primary data source and Secondary data source will be collected from journals, books, magazines and web pages Mixed (Quantitative and qualitative) methods are used to analyze the data through percentages, weighted mean and statements. A total of 337 sample respondents who comprised of 220 students, 44 instructors, and 75 administrative staffs are taken as sample respondents from both institutes. The findings show that both institutes have developed similar statuses on some variables and vary in other variables. The degree to use competition advantage variables in the two institutes is deference level: RVU mainly used cost and flexibility and AU mostly used quality and delivery in their operation of computation. The recommendation implies that by working more on those variables which created them similar statuses, either of the institutes can create additional competitive advantage |
