Capstone In Strategic Management - Quiz 4

In making an overall assessment of a company's competitive strength, the answer to which questions are of particular interest?

(1) How does the company rank relative to the competitors on each important market success factor? and (2) Does the company have a net competitive advantage or disadvantage versus major competitors?

Two of the three best indicators as to how well a company's strategy is working are

(1) whether the company is recording gains in financial strength and profitability and (2) whether the company's competitive strength and market standing are improving.

The primary purpose of value chain analysis is to

facilitate a comparison of how a company delivers value to its customers, activity by activity, relative to its competitors.litate a comparison of how a company delivers value to its customers, activity by activity, relative to its competitors.

Resources are NOT

harder to categorize than capabilities and as a result are more challenging for companies to assemble.

For a resource or capability to be competitively superior it

should be competitively valuable.

A distinctive competence is

a competitively important activity that a company performs better than its rivals.

You have been asked to defend why your strategic analysis of StitchFix solely consists of an assessment of the threats and opportunities in the company's external environment but not an evaluation of its internal resources and competitive position. How would you respond?

A SWOT analysis is indeed incomplete because managers need to draw on the results of both external industry analysis and the evaluations of the company's internal situation.

Why is a weighted competitive strength analysis superior to an unweighted analysis?

The different measures of competitive strength are unlikely to be equally important.

Which of SunPower's numerous benchmarking efforts did not improve its competitive position in the U.S. solar power industry?

They helped SunPower to develop a more complex matrix company structure, turn around its noncore assets, and focus on the low-cost, large-scale utility solar market instead of pursuing diversification into residential and commercial solar.

A powerful analytical tool to size up Warby Parker's competitive assets in order to determine whether or not those assets can provide the foundation necessary for its competitive success in the marketplace is

VRIN test.

Angie, CEO of a local alternative energy company that provides power for residential and commercial customers in your community, is engaged in the process of developing a list of questions to evaluate her company's internal situation. Which question would Angie NOT raise to complete the task of her company's resources and competitive position?

Which are our least and most profitable geographic market segments?

In evaluating how well a company's strategy is working, the two best indicators are

competitive strength and financial ratio analyses.

Company managers need to address and resolve a comprehensive set of strategy-related issues and problems EXCEPT

diversification moves of corporations competing in similar industries.

A single-business company's strategy involves all of the following except

efforts to build on its strengths and avoid partnerships and alliances with other enterprises within its industry.

Alibaba's cost competitiveness is largely a function of

how efficiently it manages its internally performed value chain activities and the costs in the value chains of its suppliers and forward channel allies.

A potential market opportunity for a company does not include

increased trade barriers in attractive foreign markets.

Improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of internally performed value chain activities does not involve

insisting on across-the-board cost cuts in all value chain activities—those performed by suppliers, those performed in-house, and those performed by distributors-dealers.

An example of a potential weakness or competitive deficiency is

lack of attention to customer needs.

A company's value chain consists of

primary activities that are foremost in creating value for customers and the requisite support activities.

Which of the following shows the cash available for a firm's day-to-day operations?

working capital