Chapter # 1

The Nature Of Strategic Management

Strategic Management

“ As the art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross functional decisions that enable an

organization to achieve its objectives”.• Strategic management focuses on

integrating management, marketing, production, operation, finance etc.

• The term strategic management used synonymously with the term strategic planning

Stages of Strategic Management

Business policy constitutes of three stages:

1.Strategy Formulation2.Strategy Implementation3.Strategy EvaluationStrategy Implementation is the “action stage” of

business policy.

Integrating Intuition and Analysis Based on past experiences, judgment and

feelings, most people recognize that intuition is essential in making good strategic decisions.

Its useful in situations of uncertainty and little precedents.

Analytical thinking and intuitive thinking complement each other.

I’ve already made up my mind don’t bother me with the facts is not management by intuition ; its management by ignorance.

Adapting To Change

• Strategic management is based on the belief that organizations should continually monitor internal and external events and trends so that timely changes can be made as needed.

• The rate and magnitude of changes that affect organizations are increasingly dramatically.

• E-commerce and globalization are external changes that are transforming business and society today.

Key terms in strategic management

• Competitive advantage: “Any thing that a firm

does especially well compared to rivals firms”.A firm must strive for sustained competitive

advantage.• Strategist : “Are the individuals who are

most responsible for the success and failure of an organization”.

Vision and Mission statement

Vision statement that answer the question “what do we want to become?”

It’s the first step in strategic planning. Mission statements are “enduring statements of

purpose that distinguish one business from other similar firms.

It addresses the basic question “what is our business”.

A clear mission statement describes the values and priorities of an organization.

• Objectives can be defined as specific results that an organization seeks to achieve in pursuing its basic mission.

• Long term means more than one year.

• Objectives should be challenging, measurable, consistent, reasonable and clear.

• Strategies are the means by which long term objectives will be achieved.

• They include geographical expansion, diversification, joint venture, retrenchment, market penetration, product development and divestiture.

Annual objectives are short-term milestones that organization must achieve to reach long term objectives.

Annual objectives is needed for long term objectives.

Annual objectives are especially important in strategy implementation, whereas, long term objectives are particularly important in strategy formulation.

Policies are the means by which annual objectives will be achieved.

Policies include guidelines, rules and procedures established to support efforts to achieve stated objectives.

Why some firms do no strategic planning

Poor reward structure Firefighting. Waste of time. Too expensive Laziness Content with success Fear of failure Overconfidence Prior bad experience Self interest Fear of the unknown Honest difference of opinion Suspicious.

Guidelines for Effective Strategic Management

• Open-mindedness

• New information

• New viewpoints

• New ideas

• Spirit of inquiry and learning

• No communication gap

• Flow of information

Business Ethics

• As principles of conduct within organizations that guide decision making and behavior.

• Good business ethics are prerequisite for good strategic management; good ethics is just good business.

• Harming the natural environment is unethical, illegal and costly

• Consider corporate social responsibility in minds.• A code of business ethics can provide a basis on

which policies can be devised to guide daily behavior and decisions at the work place.

Chapter # 2

Strategy Formulation:

The Business Vision and Mission

What do we want to become?

A clear vision provides foundation for developing a comprehensive mission statement.

Many organizations have both a vision and mission statement, but the vision statement should be made first and foremost.

The vision statement should be short, preferable one sentence and managers as possible should have input into developing the statement.

General motor:vision is to be the world leader in transportation products and related services

What is our business?

A clear mission statement is essential for effectively establishing objectives and formulating strategies.

Sometimes called creed statement, a statement of purpose, a statement of philosophy, a statement of beliefs, a statement of business principles, or a statement defining our business.

A mission statement reveals what an organization wants to be and whom it wants to serve.

Process of developing mission and vision statement

Clear vision and mission statements are needed before alternative strategies can be formulated.

Involve as many managers as possible in developing these statements.

Use discussion groups of managers to develop and modify existing statements.

Some organizations hire outside consulator or facilitator to manage the process and help draft the language.

• An article by Campbell and Yeung emphasizes that process of developing a vision and mission statements should create "emotional bond” and “sense of mission” between organization and its employees.

• They differentiate between vision term and mission, saying that vision is “a possible and desirable future state of an organization” that include specific goals, whereas mission is more associated with behavior and present.

Importance of Vision and Mission

King and Cleland recommend mission statement in order to keep the following benefits:

1. To ensure unanimity of purpose within the organization.

2. To provide a basic, or standard, for allocating organizational resources.

3. To establish a general tone or organizational climate.

4. To facilitate the translation of objectives into work structure involving the assignment of tasks to responsible elements within the organization.

1. To specify organizational purposes and then to translate thee purposes into objectives in such a way that cost, time an performance parameters can be assessed and controlled.

2. To serve as a focal point for individuals to identify with the organization's purpose and direction, and to deter those who cannot from participating further in the organization's activities.

Characteristics of a mission statement

A declaration of attitude : It should not be too lengthy Should arouse positive feelings and emotions. It should be inspiring motivate readers to action. It should be enduring. Generates the impression that a firm is successful,

has direction and is worthy of time, support and investment.

Reflects judgment about future growth direction and strategies.

A customer orientation:• Identify the utility of its firm product to its

customer.

• Good statement reflects the anticipations of customer.

• Rather than developing a product and then trying to find a market, the operating philosophy should be to identify customers’ needs and then provide a product or service to fulfill those needs.

A Declaration of social policy:

It should reveal that firm is socially responsible. Social issues mandate that strategist consider not

only what the organization owes its various stakeholders but also what responsibilities firm has to consumers. Environmentalists, minorities, communities and other groups.

Social policy directly affect a firm’s customer, products and services, marketing and image.

Corporate social policy should be designed and articulated during strategy formulation, set and administered during implementation and reaffirmed or change during evaluation.

Mission statement components

Customers Products Markets Technology Philosophy Self concept Concern for survival, growth and profitability Concern for public image Concern for employees.

Chapter # 3

The External Assessment

External Audit

• The purpose of an external audit is to develop a finite set of opportunities that benefit a firm and threats that should be avoided.

• Firms should take either offensively or defensively to the factors by formulating strategies that take advantage of external opportunities or that minimize the impact of potential threats.

Key External Factors

External forces can be divided into fived broad categories:

1. Economic forces

2. Social, Cultural, Demographics and Environmental forces.

3. Political, Legal or Government forces.

4. Technological forces.

5. Competitive forces.

External trends and events significantly affect all products, services, markets, and organizations in the world.

Changes in external forces translate into changes in consumer demand for both industrial and consumer products and services.

External forces affect the types of products developed, the nature of positioning, and market segmentation strategies, the type of service offered, and the choice of business to acquire or sell.

Foreign businesses and countries are willing to learn, adapt,innovate and invent to compete successfully in the marketplace.

The process of performing an external audit

Must involve as many managers as possible in the process. To perform an external audit, company first must gather

competitive intelligence and information about economic, social, legal, political, governmental and technological trends.

Individuals can be asked to monitor various sources of information such as key magazines, trade journals and newspapers.

These persons can provide periodic scanning reports to committee of managers.

This approach provides a continuous stream of timely strategic information .

The internet provides another source of information.

Suppliers, distributors, salesperson, customers, and competitors represents other sources of vital information.

A meeting or series of meeting of managers is needed to collectively identify the most important opportunities and threats facing the firm.

These variables should be listed on flip cahrt. Then assign numbers to them from 1 to 20. 1

being the most important opportunity.

Economic forces Economic factors have a direct impact on the potential

attractiveness of various strategies. For example when interest rate rise, funds needed for

capital expansion become more costly or unavailable. Trends in the U.S dollar’s value have significant effect

on companies indifferent industries and in different location.

For example: the pharmaceutical, tourism, entertainment, and foreign products industries benefit when the dollar falls against yen and euro.

Interest rate, gross domestic product trends, consumption patterns, stock market trends, inflation rate, fiscal policies, monetary polices all are economic variables.

Social, Cultural, Demographics and Environmental forces

These forces have a major impact upon virtually all products, services, markets and customers.

Small, large, for-profit and non-profit organizations in all industries are being staggered and challenged by the opportunities and threats arising from changes in these forces.

New trends are creating a different type of consumers and consequently, a need for different product, different service and different strategies.

Political, Governmental, and Legal forces

For industries and firms that depend heavily on government contracts or subsidies, political forecast can be the most part of external audit.

Changes in laws, tax rates and patent activities can affect firms significantly.

Laws, regulatory agencies, and special interest groups can have major impact in the strategies of small, large, for profit and non- profit firms.

Many companies in the past have altered or abandoned their strategies because of political or governmental actions.

Technological forces Revolutionary technological changes and discoveries are having a

dramatic impact on organizations. The internet is acting as a national and global economic engine that is

spurring productivity, a critical factor in the country’s ability to improve living standards, and it is saving companies billion of dollars in distribution and transaction costs from direct sales to self-service systems.

Technological forces represent major opportunities and threats that must be considered in formulating strategies.

A number of organizations are establishing two new positions in their firm: chief information officer and chief technology officer. This trend reflect the growing importance of information technology.

Technological advancements can dramatically affect organziations, suppliers, distributors, product services, markets and manufacturing processes.

Competitive forces

An important part of external audit is to identify rival firms and determining their strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, objectives, threats and strategies.

Collecting and evaluating information on competitors is essential for successful strategy formulation.

Identify major competitors is not very easy because many firms have different divisions that compete in different industries.

Competitive intelligence program is a systematic and ethical process for gathering and analyzing information about the competitors activities and general business trends.

Market commonality and Resource similarity

• Researchers use the terms Market commonality and Resource similarity to study rivalry among competitors.

• Market commonality can be defined as the number and significance of markets that a firms competes in with rivals.

• Resource similarity is the extent tow hich the type and amount of firm’s internal resources are comparable to a rival.

Porters five forces model

It’s a widely used approach for developing strategies in many industries.

According to porters, the nature of competitiveness in a given industry can be view as a composite of five forces:

1. Rivalry among competing firms.2. Potential entry of new competitors.3. Potential development of substitute products.4. Bargaining power of suppliers.5. Bargaining power of consumers.

The global challenge

The international challenges faced by firms are twofold:

1. How to gain and maintain exports to other nations?

2. How to defend domestic markets against imported goods?

Markets are shifting rapidly and in many cases converging in taste, trends and prices.

More and more countries around the world are welcoming the foreign investments and capital.

Multinational Corporations MNCs face unique and diverse risks such as currency loses

through exchange rate fluctuations, unfavorable foreign court interpretations of contract and agreements, social/political disturbances, import/ export restrictions, and trade barriers.

Strategists in MNCs are often confronted with the need to be globally competitive and nationally responsive at the same time.

Before entering international markets, firms should scan relevant journals and patent reports, seek the advice of research organizations to broaden their contract and diminish the risk of doing business in new markets.

Globalization

• A global strategy needs to meet the needs of customers worldwide, with the highest value at the lowest cost.

• This may mean locating production in countries with the lowest labor costs or abundant natural resources, locating research and complex engineers centers where skilled scientist and engineers can be found, and locating marketing activities close to the markets to be served.

• A global strategy includes designing , producing and marketing products with global needs in minds, instead of considering individual countries alone.

• When firm design a product , they design it to be marketable in as many countries as possible.

EFE Matrix EFE matrix can be developed in five steps.1. List key external factors as identified in the external audit process.2. Assign to each factor a weight that ranges from 0.0 not important to

1 very important. The sum of all weights assign to all factors should equal to 1

3. Assign a ranging between 1 and 4 to each external factors. Where 4 = the response is superior, 3=the response is above average, 2= the response is average and 1= the response is below average.

4. Multiply each factor’s weight by its rating to determine a weighted score.

5. Sum the weighted score of each variable to determine the total weight score for the organization.

CPM CPM identifies a firm’s major competitors and its particular

strength and weakness in relation to a sample firms strategic position.

The weights and total weighted scores in a CPM and an EFE have the same meaning.

Critical success factors in CPM include both internal and external issues; therefore, the ratings refer to strength and weaknesses, where 4= major strength,3=minor strength,2=minor threat and 1= major weaknesses

The CPM provides important internal strategic information. CPM factors include breadth of product line, effectiveness of sales

distribution, location of facilities, technological advancements, product quality, union relations and production capacity and efficiency.

Chapter#4

The Internal Assessment

Key internal forces

• For different types of industries such as hospitals, universities and government agencies, the functional areas, of course differ.

• Distinctive competencies:

a firm’s strength that cannot be easily matched or imitated by competitors.

• Building competitive advantage involves taking advantage of distinctive competencies.

Process of performing an internal audit

Representatives managers from throughout the firm need to gather to involved in determining a firm’s strength and weaknesses.

The internal audit requires gathering and assimilating information about the firm’s management, marketing, finanace/accounting, production/ operations, resreach and development.

Performing an external audit is an excellent vehicle for improving the process of communication.

The effectiveness of strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation activities hinges upon a clear understanding of how major business functions affect one another.

For strategist to succeed, ``coordinated efforts among all functional areas are needed.

Resource Based View RBV approach to competitive advantage contends that internal

resources are more important for a firm than external factors in achieving and sustaining competitive advantage.

Proponents of RBV contends that organziational performance will primarily be determined by internal resources that can be grouped into three categories:

1. Physical resources2. Human resources 3. Organizational resourcesPhysical resources include all plant and equipment, location,

technology, raw materials, machines; human resources include all employees, training, experience, intelligence, knowledge, skills, abilities and organizational resources include firm structure, planning process, information system, patents, trademark, databases and so on.

RBV theory asserts that resources are actually what help a firm exploit opportunities and neutralize threats.

The theory asserts that it is advantageous for a firm to pursue a strategy that is not currently being implemented by any competing firm.

When other firms cannot duplicate a strategy, then the focal firm has a sustainable competitive advantage.

For a resource to be valuable, however, it must be either1. Rare: resources that other firm cannot possess.2. Hard to imitate3. Not easily substitutable.Often called empirical indicators, these three characteristics of

resources enables a firm to improve its efficiency and effectiveness and lead a sustainable competitive advantage.

Organizational culture can be defined as “ a pattern of behavior that has been developed by an organization as it learns to cope with its problem of external adaptation and internal integration, and has been worked well enough to be considered valid and to be taught to the new members as a correct way to perceive, think and feel.”

Cultural products include values, beliefs,stories,legends,ceremonies,language,heroes and heroines.

Two organizations cannot have same culture. Organizational culture significantly affect

business decisions and thus must be evaluate during internal-strategic management audit.

Lorch found that executives in successful companies are emotionally committed to the firm’s culture, but he concluded that culture can inhibit strategic management in two basic ways:

Managers frequently miss the significance of changing external conditions because they are blinded by strongly held beliefs.

When a particular culture has been effective in the past, the natural response is to stick with it in the future even in the times of major strategic change.

An organization’s culture must support the collective commitment of its people to a common purpose.

• The challenge of strategic management today is to bring about the changes in organizational culture and individual mind-set that are needed to support the formulation, implementation and evaluation of strategies.

Management

The functions of management consists of five basic activities:

1.Planning2.Organizing3.Motivating4.Staffing5.Controlling

Planning

Planning is the essential bridge between the present and the future that increases the likelihood of achieving desired results.

Planning consists of all those managerial activities related to preparing fior the future. Specific tasks include forecasting, establishing objectives, devising strategies, developing policies, and setting goals.

Planning enables a firm to identify precisely what is to be achieved and to detail precisely who, what, when, where , why and how needed to achieve desired objectives.

Synergy exists when everyone pulls together as a team that knows what it wants to achieve; synergy is 2+2=5 effect.

Organizing

Organizing includes all those managerial activities that result in a structure of task and authority relationships. Specific areas include organizational design, job specifications, job descriptions, job specialization, span of control, unity of command, coordination and job analysis.

Organizing means who does what and who reports to whom. Resources are allocated more efficiently in an organized firm

that in a disorganized firm. Organizing consisting of three sequences:

1. Breaking down tasks into jobs(work specialization)

2. Combing of jobs to form departments(departmentalization)

3. Delegating authority.

Motivating

Motivating involves efforts directed toward shaping human behavior. Specific topics include leadership, communication, work groups, behavior modification, job satisfaction, needs fulfillment, organizational change, employee morale and managerial morale.

It can be defined as the process of influencing people to accomplish specific objectives.

Good leader establish rapport with subordinates, empathize with their needs and concerns, set a good example, and are trustworthy and fair.

Leadership includes developing a vision of the firm’s future and inspiring people to work hard to achieve that vision.

Staffing

staffing also called personal management or human resources management, includes activities such as recruiting, interviewing, testing, selecting, orienting, training, developing, caring for, evaluating, rewarding, discipline, promoting, transferring, demoting, dismissing employees, as well as managing union relations.

It plays a major role in strategy implementation efforts.

Controlling

All those activities undertaken to ensure that actual operations confront to planned operations.

Controlling consists of four basic steps: Establishing performance standard. Measuring individual and organizational

performance Comparing actual to planned performance

standards. Taking corrective actions.

Marketing

Marketing can be defined a s a process of defining, anticipating, creating, and fulfilling customers’ needs and wants for product and services.

The seven functions of marketing are:1. Customer analysis2. Selling product/ services.3. Product and service planning.4. Pricing5. Distribution6. Marketing research7. Opportunity analysis.

Customer analysis: the examination and evaluation of consumers needs, desires, and wants-involves administering customers surveys, analyzing consumer information, evaluating marketing positioning strategy.

Selling include many marketing activities such as advertising, sales promotions, publicity, personal selling, sales force management, customer relations and dealers relations.

Product and service planning include activities such as test marketing, product and brand positioning, devising warranties, packaging, product features, and product quality.

Five major stakeholders affect pricing decisions: consumers, government, suppliers, distributors, and competitors.

Distribution include warehouses, distribution channels, distribution coverage, inventory level and location, transportation carriers, wholesaling and retailing.

Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of data about problems relating to the marketing of goods and services.

Opportunity analysis which involves assessing the costs, benefits, and risk associated with marketing decisions,.

Three steps are required to perform a cost/benefit analysis:

1. Compute the total cost associated with the decision.

2. Estimate the total benefits from the decision.

3. Compare the total costs with the benefits . When EB exceeds the EC, an opportunity become more attractive

Finance/ accounting

Financial conditions is often considered the single best measure of a firm’s competitive position and overall attractiveness to investors.

A firm’s liquidity, leverage, working capital, profitability, asset utilization, cash flow and equity can eliminate some strategies as being feasible alternative.

The functions of finance/accounting comprise three decisions:1. The investment decision: capital budgeting is the allocation and

reallocation of capital and resources to projects, products, assets and division of an organization.

2. The financing decision: determines the best capital structure for the firms and includes examining various methods by which firm can raise capital.

3. The dividend decision: issues such as earnings paid to stockholders, the stability of dividends paid over time, and the repurchase and issuance of stocks.

Basic types of financial ratios Key financial ratios can be classified into five types: Liquidity ratios measure a firm’s ability to meet its short

term obligation. Leverage ratios measure the extent to which a firm has been

financed by debt. Activity ratio measure how effectively firm is using its

resources. Profitability ratios measure management’s overall

effectiveness as shown by the returns generated on sales and investment.

Growth ratios measure the firm’s ability to maintain its economic position in the growth of the economy and industry.

Production/ operations It consists of all those activities that transform inputs into goods and

services. It deals with input, transformation and outputs that vary across industries

and markets. A manufacturing operation tarnsforms or converts inputs such as raw

material, labor, capital, machines and facilities into finished goods. Roger Schroeder suggested that production/operation comprises five

functions or decisions: Process: concern the design of the physical production system. Capacity: determination of optimal output levels for all organizations. Inventory: managing the level of raw materials, work in process and

finished goods. Workforce: concerned with the managing of the skilled, unskilled, clerical

and managerial employees. Quality: aimed at ensuring that high-quality goods and services are

produced.

Research and development

Organizations invest in R&D because they believe that such an investment will lead to a superior product or service and will give them the competitive advantage.

The overall mission of R&D has become broad based , including supporting existing businesses, helping launch new businesses, developing new products, improving product quality, improving manufacturing efficiency, and broadening and deepening the company’ s technological services.

R&D can take two basic forms:1. Internal R&D, in which an organization operates its own R&D

department.2. Contract R&D, in which a firm hires independent researcher 0r

independent agencies to develop specific products.

Four approaches to determining R&D budget allocation:

1.Financing as many projects as possible.

2.Using a percentage-of-sales method.

3.Budgeting about the same amount as the competitors.

4.Deciding how many successful products are needed and working backward to estimate the required R&D investment.

Management Information System A MIS receives raw material from both the external and internal

evaluation of an organization. It gathers data about marketing, management, finance, production, personal matters internally, and social, cultural, demographics, environmental, political, legal, technological and competitive forces externally.

Data are integrated in ways needed to support managerial decisions. A MIS purpose is to improve the performance of an enterprise by

improving the quality of managerial decisions. An effective management system thus collects, codes, stores,

synthesizes, and present information in such a manner that it answers important operating and strategic questions.

The heart of an information system is a database containing the kinds of records and data important to managers.

IFE Matrix IFE matrix can be developed in five steps.1. List key internal factors as identified in the internal audit

process.2. Assign to each factor a weight that ranges from 0.0 not

important to 1 very important. The sum of all weights assign to all factors should equal to 1

3. Assign a ranging between 1 and 4 to each internal factors. Where 4 = major strength, 3=the minor strength, 2= the minor weakness and 1= the major weakness..

4. Multiply each factor’s weight by its rating to determine a weighted score.

5. Sum the weighted score of each variable to determine the total weight score for the organization.

Value Chain Analysis According to porter, the business of a firm can be best described as

a value chain , in which TR minus TC of all activities undertaken to develop and market a product or service yields value.

All firms in a industry have same value chain which includes activities such As obtaining raw material, designing products, building manufacturing facilities, developing cooperative agreements, and providing customer services.

A firm will be profitable as long as TR exceed TC incurred in creating and delivering the product or service.

Firm should strive not only to learn their VC operations but also their competitors, suppliers and distributors VC.

VCA aims to identify where low cost advantages and disadvantages exist anywhere along the value chain from raw material to customer service activities.

• VCA can enable a firm to betetr identify its own strength and weaknesses, especially as compared to competitors’ value chain analysis and their own data examined overtime.

• Value chain analysis can be critically important for a firm in monitoring whether its costs and prices are competitive.

Chapter#5

STRATEGIES IN ACTION

Long term objectives Long term objectives represent the results expected from

pursuing certain strategies. Two types of objectives are especially common in

organizations:1. Financial objectives.2. Strategic objectives. Financial objectives include those associated with growth in

revenues, earnings, higher dividends, larger profit margins, improved cash flows, raised stock price etc.

Strategic objectives includes things such as larger market share, lower costs than rivals, higher product quality than rivals, quicker on time delivery than rivals, wider geographical coverage than rivals, achieving ISO 14001 certification, achieving technological leadership, improved products to market ahead of rivals.

Not Managing By Objectives Managing by extrapolation: the idea is to keep on doing the same

things in the same ways because things are going well. Managing by crisis: based on the beliefs that the true measure of a

really good strategist is the ability to solve problems. Managing by crisis is actually a form of reacting rather than acting and of learning events dictate that what and when of management decisions.

Managing by subjective: building on the idea that there is no general plan for which way to go and what to do; just do the best you can to accomplish what you think should be done.

Managing by hope: based on the fact that future is laden by great uncertainty and that if we try and do not succeed, then we hope our second and third attempt will succeed. Decisions are predicted on the hope that they will work and good times are just around the corner, especially if luck and good fortune are at our side.

Types of strategy

Alternative strategies which an enterprise can pursue categorized in to 11 actions.

Many, if not most, organizations simultaneously pursue a combination of two or more strategies but a combination strategy can be exceptionally risky if carried too far.

Hansen and Smith explain that strategic planning involves "choices that risk resources” and “trade –offs that sacrifice opportunity”.

In large firms there are four levels of strategies: corporate, divisional, functional and operational.

In small firms, there are actually three level of strategies: company, functional and operational.

Integration strategies Forward integration, backward integration, and horizontal

integration are sometimes collectively referred to as vertical integration strategies.

Vertical integration strategies allow a firm to gain control over suppliers, distributors and or competitors.

forward integration involves gaining control over distributors or retailers.

Increasingly numbers of manufactures are pursuing this strategy by establishing web sites to directly sell products to consumers.

An effective way of implementing forward integration is franchising. They can expand rapidly by franchising because costs and opportunities are spread among many individuals.

Six guidelines for forward integration(refer to book)

Backward integration is a strategy of seeking ownership of firm’s suppliers.

This strategy can be especially appropriate when firm suppliers are not reliable, too costly or cannot meet the firms needs.

Horizontal integration refers to a strategy of seeking control over a firm’s competitors..

Mergers, acquisition, and takeovers among competitors allow for increased economies of scale and enhance transfer of resources and competencies.

Five guidelines for effective strategy

Intensive strategies Market penetration, product development, and market

development are sometimes referred to as intensive strategies.

A market penetration strategy seeks to increase market share for present products or services in present market through greater marketing efforts.

This include increasing the number of salesperson, increasing advertising expenditure, offering extensive sales promotions, and increase publicity efforts.

Market development involves introducing present products and services into new geographic areas.

Product development is a strategy that seeks increased sales by improving or modifying present products or services. It usually entails large research and development expenditure.

Diversification strategies There are two types of diversification strategies: related or

unrelated . Businesses are said to be related when their value chain

posses competitively valuable cross-business value fits. Business are said to be unrelated when their value chains

are so dissimilar that no competitively valuable cross-business relationship exists.

Google acquisition of the website you tube was an example of related diversification.

Pursuing un related diversification entails being on the hunt to acquire companies whose assets are undervalued, or companies that are financially distressed, or companies that have high growth potential but are short of investment capital.

Defensive strategies

• Defensive strategies include retrenchment, divestiture, or liquidation.

• Retrenchment occurs when an organization regroup through cost and asset reduction to reverse declining sales and profits.

• Retrenchment can entail selling of land and building to raise capital, closing marginal businesses , closing obsolete factories, reducing the number of employees and instituting expense control system.

• Sometimes called turnaround or reorganizational strategy.

• Selling a part or division of an organization is divestiture.

• Divestiture has become a popular strategy for firms to focus on their core businesses and become less diversified.

• Liquidation is selling all of a company’s assets, in parts, for their tangible worth.

• Liquidation is a recognition of a defeat and consequently can be an emotionally difficult strategy.

Michael Porter’s five generic strategies

Strategies allow organization to gain competitive advantage from three different bases:

1. Cost leadership

2. Differentiation

3. Focus Porters called these three bases generic strategies. Cost leadership emphasize producing standardized products at a very low

per-unit costs for the consumers. Two alternative cost leadership strategies are:

1. Type-1 is a low-cost strategy that offers products or services for a wide range of consumers at the lowest price available on the market.

2. Type-2 is the best-value strategy that offers products or services for a wide range of consumers at the best value available on the market.

The best value strategy aims to offer consumers a range of products at the lowest price available compared to rival’s products with similar attributes.

Both type 1 and type2 strategies target a large market. Type3 generic strategy is differentiation. It is a strategy aimed at producing products and services

considered unique industry wide and directed at consumers who are really price sensitive.

Mountain beer has unique taste, dell computer and FedEx offer superior service, wal mart offer wide selection and one-stop shopping.

The most effective differentiation bases are those that are hard or expensive for rivals to imitate.

Value must exceed the price for buyers.

Focus means producing goods and services that fulfill the needs of small groups of consumers.

Two alternative type of focus strategies are type4 and type5 strategies.

Type4 is a low cost focus strategy that offer product or service to a small range of customers at the low price available on the market.

Type5 is a best-value strategy that offers product or service to a small range of customers at the best price value available on the market.

This strategy aims to provide products that meet customers tastes and requirements better than rivals products.

Type 4 offers products at a low price whereas, type5 offers products to a niche group at higher prices but loaded with features so that offerings are perceived as the best value.

JV is a popular strategy that occurs when two or more companies forma temporary partnership for the purpose of capitalizing on some opportunity.

Other type of cooperative arrangements include R&D partnership, cross-distribution agreements, cross-manufacturing agreements.

A major reason for JV is globalization. A merger occurs when two organizations of about

equal size unite to form one enterprise. An acquisition occurs when one large organization

purchases a smaller firm. When merger or acquisition is not desired by both

parties, it can be called as takeover or hostile takeover.

In contrast, is the acquisition is desired by both parties, it is termed as friendly takeover.

First mover advantage

First mover advantages refer to the benefits a firm may achieve by entering a new market or developing a product or service prior to rivals.

First mover is especially wise when such actions:1. Build a firm image and reputation.2. Build cost advantage over rivals in terms of new

technologies, and new distribution channels.3. Create strongly loyal customers.4. Make imitation or duplication hard by rivals.