MGMT 449
An industry's key success factors can always be deduced by asking what factors
What are the industry product R&D capabilities and expertise in product design?
Managers of all types of business organizations must develop a clear answer for which of the following questions?
What is the set of actions that we need to take to outperform competitors and achieve superior profitability?
The strategically relevant factors outside a company's industry boundaries—economic conditions, political factors, sociocultural forces, technological factors, environmental factors, and legal/regulatory conditions—are known as
a company's macro-environment.
A company's strategy stands a better chance of succeeding when
it is predicated on competitive moves aimed at appealing to buyers in ways that set the company apart from rivals.
Organizational capabilities are virtually always
knowledge based, residing in people and in the company's intellectual capital, or in organizational processes and systems, which embody tacit knowledge.
The difference between the concept of a company mission statement and the concept of a strategic vision is that a
mission statement typically concerns a company's purpose and its present business scope, whereas the principal concern of a strategic vision is a company's aspirations for its future.
Using the five forces model of competition to determine the character and strength of the competitive forces within a given industry involves
building the picture of competition in three steps: (1) identify the different parties involved, along with specific factors that bring about competitive pressures; (2) evaluate how strong the pressures stemming from each of the five forces are (strong, moderate or weak); and (3) determine whether the collective impact of the five competitive forces is conducive to earning attractive profits in the industry.
Buyers are in position to exert strong bargaining power in dealing with sellers when
buyers are price sensitive because the product represents a significant portion of their purchasing budget.
Sanofi, a pharmaceutical company selling prescription drugs in France for the past 10 years, has had moderate sales in a crowded market while its rivals manufacture and market drugs having similar efficacy and safety precautions, but with superior market share. This particular pharmaceutical company's greatest challenge is to increase prescriptions of their drugs by French doctors. What would be the most effective strategy for Sanofi to improve sales performance in its existing market?
modifying marketing communication to increase brand familiarity within key physician segments
A company's strategic plan
outlines the competitive moves and approaches to be used in achieving the desired business results.
The faster a company's business environment is changing, the more critical it becomes for its managers to
pay attention to early warnings of future change and be willing to experiment to establish a market position in the future.
The company with the highest rating on a given measure has an implied competitive edge on that specific measure, with the size of its edge
reflecting the difference between its weighted rating and rivals' weighted ratings.
Strategic objectives
relate to strengthening a company's overall market standing and competitive position.
In the course of crafting a strategy, managers typically do not
share the strategy publicly to obtain additional customer and shareholder support.
Which two factors inhibit the ability of rivals to imitate a firm's most valuable resources and capabilities?
social complexity and causal ambiguity
A company's strategy is not concerned with management's choices about how to
stake out the same market position as successful rival companies.
What is the best technique for revealing the different market or competitive position that rival firms occupy in the industry?
strategic group mapping
A company's strategic options for remedying cost disadvantages in internally performed value chain activities do not include
switching to activity-based costing.
A company's resources and capabilities represent
the firm's competitive assets that determine its competitiveness and ability to succeed in the marketplace.
A winning strategy must pass which three tests?
the fit test, the competitive advantage test, and the performance test
A company's realized strategy evolves from one version to the next due to
the proactive efforts of company managers to improve the current strategy, a need to respond to changing customer requirements and expectations, and a need to react to fresh strategic maneuvers on the part of rival firms.
Two analytical tools useful in determining whether a company's prices and costs are competitive are
value chain analysis and benchmarking.
In which one of the following instances is supplier bargaining power and leverage not weakened?
when industry members pose a credible threat of backward integration into the business of suppliers
In which of the following instances is rivalry among competing sellers not more intense?
when there are vast numbers of small rivals so the impact of any one company's actions is spread thinly across all industry members
Giving customers more value for the money by satisfying their expectations on key quality features, performance, and/or service attributes while beating their price expectations is a __________ strategy.
best-cost provider
If you were conducting a SWOT analysis for a textbook publisher, which of the following steps would you omit from your SWOT analysis?
benchmarking the textbook publisher's resource strengths and competitive capabilities against industry key success factors
What a company's top executives are saying about where the company is headed long term with respect to its future product-market-customer-technology mix
constitutes the strategic vision for the company.
The strategy-making hierarchy in a diversified company like Alibaba Group, an e-commerce giant based in China, consists of
corporate strategy, business strategies, functional strategies, and operating strategies.
Industry conditions change because of
important forces enticing or pressuring certain industry participants (competitors, customers, suppliers) to alter their actions in important ways.
Which of the following driving forces would have the least impact on the attractiveness of the cosmetics industry?
industry incumbents deciding to shift to a different strategic group
The managerial task of developing a strategic vision for a company
involves deciding upon what strategic course a company should pursue in preparing for the future and why this directional path makes good business sense.
Management is obligated to monitor new external developments, evaluate the company's progress, and make corrective adjustments in order to
decide whether to continue or change the company's strategic vision, objectives, strategy, and/or strategy-execution methods.
A resource of a firm is considered to be
deployed to develop and enable a firm's capabilities.
A competitively valuable resource or capability is a company's
enabling foundation of its business model.
The wording of a company's vision statement should commonly be
flexible—adjustable according to changing circumstances.
The most significant signs of a well-managed company are
good strategy-making combined with good strategy execution.
The benefit of a vivid, engaging, and convincing strategic vision is not its ability to
help company personnel understand the logic of the company's business model.
The most difficult part of benchmarking is
how to obtain access to information regarding rivals' practices and costs.
