The author made a ton of mistakes in the article, one of which is apparently failing to grasp that there can be matters of macro and micro strategy involved in operating similar businesses.
Two burger franchises can both be in the business of selling burgers and fries and how they prepare/arrange that food can be very different (never frozen vs frozen; etc). Thus according to the author doing things differently is only strategy if it's at some arbitrarily high enough macro level. The author is wrong of course, it is strategy.
The whole premise of the article collapses upon that issue however. So if the author had reconciled their rather enormous contradiction, it would have torpedoed the article.
Two burger franchises can both be in the business of selling burgers and fries and how they prepare/arrange that food can be very different (never frozen vs frozen; etc). Thus according to the author doing things differently is only strategy if it's at some arbitrarily high enough macro level. The author is wrong of course, it is strategy.
The whole premise of the article collapses upon that issue however. So if the author had reconciled their rather enormous contradiction, it would have torpedoed the article.