Course Content
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Topic outline
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Michael Porter Five forces Model : A practical example
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Lecture 3 - Evaluating a Company’s Resources, Capabilities, and Competitiveness Audio power points presentation
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CNET reports on a beta service for Amazon Prime, called Wardrobe. Wardrobe lets Prime members order clothes online, have a week to try them on, return unwanted items and only pay for those you keep. It’s another example of how Amazon works their way into members’ wallets. Amazon’s unique array of interrelated elements makes it difficult to imitate. Amazon Prime Wardrobe will further the company’s inimitability by offering shoppers one more reason to buy. And with discounts for purchasing five or more items and near hassle-free returns, Amazon may have found one more way to ensure customer loyalty.
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Lecture 4 - Business- level strategy: The Five Generic Competitive Strategies.Audio power points presentation
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Lecture 5 - Corporate - Level strategy: Diversification and Multi-Business Company .Audio power points presentation
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Tim Stevens, Editor in Chief at Roadshow, takes viewers on a tour of what will be one of the world’s most advanced factories. Tesla and Panasonic have teamed up to create the Giga factory, which when complete, will more than double the world’s output of lithium-ion batteries made in 2013. Tesla’s adopted vertical integration strategy to produce its own batteries for the Model 3, and eventually for all of its vehicles. The video segment showcases just how large a factory will be needed to achieve CEO Elon Musk’s dream and reduce the cost of batteries by at least 30 percent in the process.
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Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money speaks to David Jaffe, the CEO of popular retailer Ascena, to find out the recent acquisition of ANN, the corporation owning the Ann Taylor and Loft brands. Ascena, owner of popular women’s brands like Justice, Lane Bryant, and Dress Barn. Besides discussing the $150 million in cost savings he expects to materialize in three years, Jaffe points out that industry insiders hope that women will move out of a recession mindset. Jaffe explains that infrastructure synergies will be the source of the cost savings, and Cramer agrees that the synergies are “yuuuge”! This case, and the acquisition of ANN specifically, highlight the possibilities of related diversification. Ascena’s acquisition makes sense, seeing that there is little overlap of that Ann Taylor and Loft brands with Ascena’s existing brands, as Jaffe explains. The video also allows students to ponder the question, “Is Ascena’s acquisition an example of economies of scale, economies of scope, or both?”
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JC Penney’s Incoming Chief Executive Officer Marvin Ellison has laid out his plans for a turnaround of the struggling retailer when he takes over the company on August 1. Bloomberg’s Matt Townsend reports on “Bloomberg Markets.” Marvin Ellison exhibits leadership attributes as he tries to bring JC Penney back from the brink. The video segment reports that Ellison plans to put front-line employees in face-to-face with the customer more often to improve service. Yet it remains to be seen if the former Home Depot executive can translate his knowledge of DIY customers to fashion-conscious consumers
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CNN’s Christina Alesci breaking down the highlights of Easterbrook’s 20-minute turnaround announcement. The fast-food chain recently released its CEO and promoted Steve Easterbrook, the former chief of McDonald’s Europe. And he has a whopper of a problem on his hands: traffic is down in all of its market segments—bad news for a firm that counts on its name-brand recognition to bring in customers. Indeed, the rise in more chic restaurants that also provide speedy service—think Chipotle, Five Guys, and Panera—have been giving McDonald’s a run for its money. The second segment features Vinita Nair of CBS This Morning, who reports that McDonald's had its best quarter in nearly four years after a big jump in sales from October to December 2015.
Chapter 2: Mellody Hobson suggests that McDonald’s use of kiosk ordering will appeal to Millennials, an example of environmental scanning and monitoring for technological change.
Chapter 3: In the second video segment, we learn about the success of the all-day breakfast menu. But just what changes to its value chain would help increase the value created?
Chapter 4: It should be clear to the students that McDonald’s follows an overall cost leadership strategy. How does continually adding to the menu overall improve or detract from that strategy? What does Alesci’s 60-second breakdown of the turnaround plan tell us about how they plan to move forward?
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Mark Fields was hand-picked to be the CEO successor to the wildly-successful Alan Mulally. After a strong start, Ford’s stock languished while overall indices climbed. And given the massive shift in the automotive industry towards electric and autonomous vehicles, Executive Chairman Bill Ford and the rest of the board selected Jim Hackett to man the helm.
Chapter 2: The coming of electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) to the marketplace provides opportunities and challenges for traditional automakers like Ford.
Chapter 3: Executive Chairman Bill Ford stressed the need to satisfy Ford’s stockholders (including the Ford family), yet the challenges facing Ford cannot be solved by financial engineering in the long term. Finding ways to measure performance using the balanced scorecard—customer, internal business, innovation/learning, and financial—could be an instructive exercise for students to explore in light of Ford’s leadership changes.
Chapter 4 : Those who know the auto industry would likely characterize Ford as pursuing an overall cost leadership strategy, while Tesla would be characterized as differentiation. Yet as EVs and AVs become more mainstream over the next decade, will the technology drop in price enough for companies like Ford to be profitable mass producing EVs and AVs.
Chapter 5: Ford Motor has been the penultimate example of related diversification through vertical integration in its Rouge River plant during the first half of the twentieth century, extending to the 1990s through its acquisitions of Mazda, Volvo, Aston Martin, Land Rover, and Jaguar. Yet Mulally has dismantled much of this empire, and Fields tried to strengthen the brand as evidenced by Lincoln’s revival. With Jim Hackett in the driver’s seat, time will tell how vertically integrated Ford will stay. For example, Ford makes their own motors for all of their vehicles.
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You have 60 minutes to answer 30 questions.
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A- Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantages. Gregory Dess , 10th Edition . Publisher: McGraw Hill Education.
B- Essentials of Strategic Management: the Quest for Competitive Advantage by John Gamble, Arthur Thompson Jr., Margaret Peteraf, 6th edition. Publisher: McGraw Hill Education.
