Amazon Strategy Management & External and Internal Analyses Project

User Generated

wnlyre12

Business Finance

Description

This is the MBA Strategy Management - master level course.

Read the full project details and follow the 5 steps instructions.

You should do a lot of researches, and you may need a lot of quotes and cites, (like the background of the company, search for a vision, mission statement, and state­ment of values for your chosen firm, etc.)

This is a big final project. Totally 10 pages.

Course textbook name:

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-W/CONNECT+ ACCESS by ROTHAERMEL, 4th Edition (2019), McGraw-Hill.

ISBN: 9781260141825)

No grammar errors.

No plagiarism.

Otherwise, I will drop it.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

FULL PROJECT OVERVIEW The goal of the strategy term project is to give you practical experience with the elements of strategic management. Each assignment requires data collection about, and analysis of, the firm you select for this study. By the end of the final step of this project, you will have gained practice in using key strategic management concepts and processes, increased your understanding of the material, and developed real experience in conducting a complete strategic management analysis of a company. Step 1: Initial Firm Selection and Review Select one company you are interested in learning more about, or a company from an industry that intrigues you; this will be the company you will strategically analyze at the end of each chapter. Be sure to choose a company that makes its details (for example, annual reports, number of employees, management structure, business model, and so forth) easily available to the public. Since much of what you’ll be doing for each assignment is obtaining and analyzing data about the firm, available access to firm’s details is especially important. Selecting a Publicly Held Firm The primary approach to this project is to select a publicly held firm. Many large firms (for example, Apple, Google, and GE) have been widely reported on in the business and popular press, and a wealth of information is available on them. Other medium-sized public firms, such as Tesla, Netflix, and BlackBerry, can be used as example firms for this project. One cautionary note: For firms that are less than three years public or in industries that are not well-defined, it will take extra effort to properly identify such items as competitors and suppliers. But if it is a firm you are truly motivated to study, the effort can be quite rewarding. Relevant data on all public firms can be freely obtained using web services such as Edgar (www.sec. gov/edgar.shtml). (For guidance on how to pull data from the Securities and Exchange Commission website, ask your instructor to download instructions from the Instructor’s Resources tab in Connect for the fourth edition. Annual reports for firms also are a treasure trove of information. These reports and other quarterly update materials are often available from the firm’s own website (look for “about us” or “investor relations” tabs, often located at the bottom of the company’s website). Additionally, most university and public libraries have access to large databases of articles from many trade publications. (Factiva and ABI/Proquest are two examples.) Company profiles of a variety of publicly listed firms are available at reliable websites such as Hoovers.com and finance.yahoo.com. Many industries have quite active trade associations that will have websites and publications that can also be useful in this process. Your local librarian can likely provide you with additional resources that may be licensed for library use or that are otherwise not available online. Examples of these are Value Line Ratings & Reports and Datamonitor. STEP 1: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING 1. Provide a brief history of the company. 2. List the top management of the firm and note what experience and leadership skills the executives bring to the firm. If it is a larger conglomerate, list both the corporate and business managers. 3. What is the principal business model of the firm? (How does the firm make most of its profits?) 4. Search for a vision, mission statement, and statement of values for your chosen firm. Note that not all organizations publish these statements, so you may need to make inferences from the available information. Relevant information is often available at the firm’s website (though it may take some searching) or is contained in its annual reports. You may also interview a manager of the firm or contact investor relations. You may also be able to compare the official statement with the business press coverage of the firm. STEP 2: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL ANALYSES 1. Are any changes taking place in the macroenvironment that might have a positive or negative impact on the industry in which your company is based? Apply the PESTEL framework to identify which factors may be the most important in your industry. What will be the effect on your industry? 2. Apply the five forces model to your industry. What does this model tell you about the nature of competition in the industry? 3. Identify any strategic groups that might exist in the industry. How does the intensity of competition differ across the strategic groups you have identified? 4. How dynamic is the industry in which your company is based? Is there evidence that industry structure is reshaping competition or has done so in the recent past? 5. A good place to start with an internal firm analysis is to catalog the assets a firm has. List the firm’s tangible assets. Then make a separate list of its intangible assets. 6. Now extend beyond the asset base and use the VRIO framework to identify the competitive position held by your firm. Which, if any, of these resources are helpful in sustaining the firm’s competitive advantage? 7. Identify the core competencies that are at the heart of the firm’s competitive advantage. (Remember, a firm will have only one, or at most a few, core competencies, by definition.) 8. Perform a SWOT analysis for your firm. Remember that strengths and weaknesses (S, W) are internal to the firm, and opportunities and threats (O, T) are external. Prioritize the strategic actions that you would recommend to your firm. Refer to the Implications for Strategic Leaders section on how to conduct a SWOT analysis and provide recommendations building from strategic alternatives. STEP 3: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING INNOVATION AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES QUESTIONS 1. Where does your firm position itself on the industry life cycle? What are the strategic implications? 2. What is the firm’s innovation strategy? Does it rely on incremental or radical innovations? Disruptive or architectural? What are the competitive implications of the firm’s innovation strategies? 3. What attributes describe the current major customer segment for your firm? Are these changing? If so, is your firm prepared to meet these new customer demands? 4. How does your firm organize for innovation? Does it use a closed or an open innovation approach? Is its current approach working, or does it need changing? If it does need changing, in what way? 5. Does your selected business have differentiated products or services? If so, what is the basis for this differentiation from the competition? 6. Does your firm have a cost-leadership position in this business? If so, can you identify which cost drivers it uses effectively to hold this position? 7. What is your firm’s approach to the market? If it segments the market, identify the scope of com-petition it is using. 8. Using the answers to the preceding questions, identify which generic business strategies your firm is employing. Is the firm leveraging the appropriate value and cost drivers for the business strategy you identified? Explain why or why not. 9. What suggestions do you have to improve the firm’s business strategy and strategic position? 10. Create a strategy canvas for your firm. Set on the horizontal axis an appropriate selection of the value curve items and on the vertical axis, set the other industry segments (such as strategic groups) for comparison. STEP 4: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING GLOBAL STRATEGY QUESTIONS *** If your firm is already engaged in international activities, answer the following questions*** 1. Is your company varying its product or service to adapt to differences in countries? Is the marketing approach different among the nations involved? Should it be? 2. Is your firm working internationally to access larger markets? To gain low-cost input factors? To develop new competencies? Is its approach in all three areas appropriate? 3. Which of the four global strategies is the firm using? Is this the best strategy for it to use? Why or why not? (FYI: Exhibit 10.9 provides a summary of the four global strategies.) *** If your firm is not now engaged internationally, answer the following questions*** 1. Would your firm’s product or service need to be modified or marketed differently if it expanded beyond the home country? 2. Does your firm have the potential to access larger markets by expanding internationally? Does it have the possibility of lowering input factors with such expansion? Please explain why or why not. 3. If your firm decided to expand internationally, where does the firm reside on the integrationresponsiveness framework? (FYI: Refer to Exhibit 10.7 if needed.) What does this result say about the “best” global strategy for your firm to use for international expansion? STEP 5: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING DESIGN AND GOVERNANCE QUESTIONS 1. What is the organizational structure of your focal firm? Would you describe it as following a traditional organizational structure or a holacracy? What key characteristics can you point to as evidence? In what way has this structure had an impact on the firm’s competitive advantage? 2. Consider your firm’s competitive position and how it has responded to shifts in the external or internal environments. What major strategic change should the firm seriously consider implementing to avoid inertia? Or if the firm is already facing inertia, what can it do to break it? 3. Find a list of the members of the board of directors for your firm. How large is the board? How many independent (non-employee) members are on the board? Are any women or minorities on the board? Is the CEO also the chair of the board? 4. Who are the largest stockholders of your firm? Is there a high degree of employee ownership of the stock? 5. In reviewing press releases and news articles about your firm over the past year, can you find examples of any actions the firm has taken that, though legal, may be ethically questionable? 6. You have now completed 12 modular assignments about your selected firm. You know a lot about its mission, strategies, competitive advantage, and organization. Is this a company you would like to work for? If you had $1,000 to invest in a firm, would you invest it in the stock of this firm? Why or why not?
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Please let me know if there is anything needs to be changed or added. I will be also appreciated that you can let me know if there is any problem or you have not received the work. Please let me know if there is anything needs to be changed or added. I will be also appreciated that you can let me know if there is any problem or you have not received the work Good luck in your study and if you need any further help in your assignments, please let me know Can you please confirm if you have received the work? Once again, thanks for allowing me to help you R

Running Head: STRATEGY MANAGEMENT: AMAZON

Strategy Management: Amazon
Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Date:

1

STRATEGY MANAGEMENT: AMAZON

2

Table of Contents
Strategy Management: Amazon ................................................................................................. 3
Step 1. Company background ..........................................

Similar Content

Related Tags