When determining the etymological origin of the term advantage, we must clarify that it is found in the French word: avantage, which in turn emanates from the adverb avant, which can be translated as “before” and which derives from the Latin word far.
An advantage is a superiority or improvement of something or someone over another thing or person. It can be defined as a favorable condition that something or someone has. For example: “The local team takes advantage because their rival has four injured players”, “The advantage of this refrigerator is that it consumes 15% less energy compared to similar models from other brands”, “It bothers me that you wanted to take advantage of the situation” The concept of advantage is common in sports or scoring games. Advantage is a situation of supremacy that a player or a team has until he manages to achieve victory. If a soccer team defeats its rival 3-2, it can be said that it has a one-goal advantage.
Likewise, within the sports field, the concept of advantage is often used to refer to the points that one team scores against another in the classification of a certain competition. Thus, for example, we could express the following sentence: “FC Barcelona is eight points ahead of Real Madrid”. All this without forgetting that there is the term advantageous player. It is used to refer to the person who participates in the game of a certain game or competition and who performs all kinds of tricks in order to be able to proclaim himself the winner. Specifically, it is considered that he not only uses stealth and cunning, but also various tricks to achieve his goal. The notion is also used in economics and finance. Comparative advantage is that enjoyed by one country over another for the development of a product, since it is capable of producing it at a lower cost. A country like Argentina has comparative advantages for agricultural production, since the natural environment facilitates these tasks. Competitive advantage, by the way, is an advantage that a company has over its competitors. This advantage can be the value of the brand, a technological patent, the capacity of its human resources or the protection of the State, for example. It is essential to make it clear that for any advantage to be considered competitive and effective and also efficient, it must be qualified or identified by the following characteristics: it can be applied to several different situations that occur in the market, it must be in full compliance with the regulations existing legal requirements, it must be possible to maintain it and it must also make a significant difference to what the competition offers.
Specifically, among the types of competitive advantages that a certain company may have over another are the superior qualities of its products or the good reputation it has. It should be noted that the idea of taking advantage or taking advantage of within the framework of healthy competition is accepted. On the other hand, if someone tries to take advantage of a confusion or a complex moment, the attitude will be condemned on a social level.
