4800j Geringer Quizzes Chapters 1-4
Which of the following real-world examples best supports the statement that strategic commitments to a specific industry may be the result of political rather than economic considerations?
A number of European governments created Airbus through direct subsidies to provide a countervailing power to Boeing.
Which of the following statements is true of strategy?
Actions that allow a firm to address a competitive challenge are strategy
Which of the following statements does the upper-echelons theory support?
Executives interpret situations through the lens of their unique perspectives, shaped by personal circumstances, values, and experiences.
Which of the following statements best supports the fact that even during a period of low demand in the U.S. automotive industry, excess capacity remained?
GM and Chrysler, despite their bankruptcy, restructured instead of exiting the industry.
Which of the following is a feature of a fragmented industry?
It consists of many small firms.
Revved Rider Inc., a motorcycle company, is the market leader due to its superior engine technology and service orientation. These unique qualities have helped the company generate revenues that are consistently higher than other firms in the same industry. Which of the following can be concluded about Revved Rider Inc. from this scenario?
It has a competitive advantage over the other firms.
If a company chooses to keep its vision customer-oriented rather than product-oriented, what will be the implication of that decision?
The company will tend to be more flexible when adapting to changing environments.
Which of the following statements about the five forces in the U.S. airline industry is true?
The competitive forces taken together are quite unfavorable for generating a profit potential in the airline industry.
Which of the following statements will effectively guide a strategist?
The principles of strategic management can be applied universally to all organizations.
Onivo Auto Inc. has been the leader in low-cost and fuel-efficient engine technology for many years. It has been able to sustain its competitive advantage primarily because of its highly efficient automobile engines, which competitors have been unable to develop or buy at a reasonable price. In the context of the VRIO framework, which of the following resource attributes most likely underpins Onivo's competitive advantage?
The resource is costly to imitate.
Incumbent firms can benefit from several important sources of entry barriers. Economies of scale are one such source. Which of the following is an implication of economies of scale for incumbent firms?
They can demand better terms from their suppliers.
Which of the following statements is true of customer-oriented visions?
They define a business in terms of providing solutions to people's needs.
How do complements affect a primary product or service?
They increase the demand for the primary product.
Which of the following statements accurately brings out the difference between an organization's vision and mission?
Vision defines what the organization wants to accomplish ultimately, whereas the mission defines the means by which vision is accomplished.
If a firm is not effectively organized to exploit the competitive potential of a valuable, rare, and costly to imitate (VRI) resource, the best case scenario is
a temporary competitive advantage.
A firm's _______ are best described as distinct and fine-grained business processes such as order taking, physical delivery of products, or invoicing customers.
activities
Generally speaking, which of these situations is likely to lead to greater profits?
an industry with fewer but larger competitors
In a perfectly competitive industry structure
any competitive advantage that one firm has will be short-lived.
Which of the following groups is most likely to be considered a firm's internal stakeholder?
board members
How has Walmart staked out a unique strategic position?
by cutting costs to offer lower prices than competitors.
The metaphor of a black swan best applies to
events that are considered highly unexpected and highly impactful when they do occur.
Which of the following is a philanthropic responsibility of a firm?
exhibiting corporate citizenship
Widgets Inc. is a vendor who supplies machine parts to an appliance manufacturing company. In return, Widgets Inc. relies on the company for its revenue and is affected by any decisions taken by the company. In this scenario, Widgets Inc. is a(n) _____ for the appliance manufacturing company.
external stakeholder
Product-oriented vision statements provide managers with
goals to improve service.
Patents, designs, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets are five forms of
intellectual property.
A firm's _____ is likely to fall by the wayside because of unpredictable events and turn into unrealized strategy.
intended strategy
The amount that savers are paid for use of their money and the amount that borrowers pay for that use is best described as a(n)
interest rate.
Which of the following is a stakeholder attribute that managers should consider at every step in a stakeholder impact analysis?
legitimacy
According to the upper-echelons theory,
organizational outcomes reflect the values of the top management team.
Owners of coffee plantations in the country of Jabatina grow their own coffee beans and supply them to various stores and restaurants all over the country. There are many plantation owners supplying to a huge number of companies, and they are typically unable to differentiate their products from one another. They also do not have the power to fix their own prices in the industry. In addition, these suppliers can only achieve competitive parity and not a competitive advantage. Thus, the coffee bean industry in Jabatina best illustrates a(n)___ structure.
perfectly competitive
Restrictions imposed by the government, such as export quotas on certain products, are a part of the _______ environment of the PESTEL framework.
political
According to the value chain analysis, which of the following is a support activity?
research and development
Even though Easy Speak Inc. and KM Com Inc. operate in the same industry—telecommunications—each firm has a different and loyal customer base. While Easy Speak Inc. attracts young students and professionals through its efficient network coverage and pricing, KM Com Inc. attracts elderly customers solely due to its excellent customer service. Thus, both firms draw their strengths from distinct resource bundles. Which of the following assumptions of the resource-based model of competitive advantage does this scenario best illustrate?
resource heterogeneity
Which of the following is an example of a firm's capabilities?
skills involved in training and managing a workforce
Within the context of strategic management it is important to understand that black swan events in the past have demonstrated that
stakeholders can affect or be affected by a firm's actions.
While most of Savvy Inc.'s competitors were moving toward developing and emerging markets, Savvy Inc. decided to keep its operations limited to its home country so that it could gain some advantage. A few years later, however, Savvy Inc. lost its footing in the home market due to a sharp fall in demand. It then decided to invest in large-scale operations in the same developing nations as its competitors, within a short period of six months. However, its costs kept increasing, so it could not compete against the already established brands. In this scenario, the failure of Savvy Inc. can be best attributed to
time compression diseconomies.
Evaluating the data collected from environmental analysis, the corporate executives of F&S Pharma Inc. realized that it was the right time to expand the business. The company's vision was accordingly adjusted from "To Be the Best in the Pharmaceutical Industry" to "To Make Good Health Accessible to Everyone around the Globe." To support the new vision, the executives decided that the company would first enter the Asian market where its growth potential would be huge. To further support these decisions, the general managers of different SBUs and the functional managers formulated their own strategies. Which of the following approaches to the development of strategy does this best illustrate?
top-down strategic planning
When a firm integrates the competitive strategies of cost-leadership and differentiation, it will most likely result in
trade-offs that work against each other.
Using the _______, managers can see how competitive advantage flows from a firm's distinct set of activities.
value chain analysis
A company's vision primarily states
what the company wants to ultimately accomplish.
