Identification of the firm’s strategy and its competitors’ strategies:
summarize the focal firm’s strategy *as well as its competitors’ strategies*
discuss why each firm has chosen its respective strategy, as well as the main advantages and disadvantages of each, based upon the firm’s characteristics.
This task should be accomplished by means of *a table*
Value Chain Analysis: Outline: – *structure as per instructions*
What activities are used to receive, store, and disseminate inputs to a product (materials handling, warehousing, inventory control, etc.) in your company?
Describe the activities necessary to convert the inputs provided by inbound logistics into final product form (machining, packaging, assembly, etc.) What are the chief elements of your company’s production strategy? (e.g., making plant upgrades, use of TQM programs, etc)?
What activities are involved with collecting, storing, and physically distributing the product to your customers (e.g., finished goods warehousing, order processing, etc)?
Analyze the chief elements of your company’s marketing strategy (e.g., pricing, advertising, promotions, distribution channels, deployment of all the other weapons of competitive rivalry).
Describe the activities designed to enhance or maintain your product’s value (repair, training, adjustment, etc).
Analyze the activities that support the work of the entire value chain (e.g., general management, planning, finance, accounting, legal, government relations, etc). For example, what are the chief elements of your company’s finance strategy (e.g., the use of debt, dividend payments, sales/purchases of stock, use of cash, etc)? What is your company’s strategy for exercising social responsibility and being a good corporate citizen?
Management. How does your company recruit, hire, train, develop, and compensate its personnel (e.g., use of overtime, worker compensation)?
What activities are completed to improve your firm’s product and what processes are used to manufacture it (process equipment, basic research, product design, etc)?
Describe the activities completed to purchase the inputs needed to produce your firm’s products (raw materials and supplies, machines, laboratory equipment, etc).
Benchmark each activity against the closest competitor and industry averages. For example, in your analysis, elucidate what each firm spends on marketing? What marketing methods are used? Did the marketing tactics change in response to competition? In addition, each activity should be examined relative to competitors’ abilities and rated as superior, equivalent or inferior.
Compare each activity over two logical points in time (change in the economy, introduction of a new product in the industry, disaster like BP, Toyota recalls).