Eastman Industry Analysis

George Eastman and John D. Rockefeller were both captains of industry due to being philanthropists and innovators. George Eastman was an innovator by reinventing how people can take pictures. Before Eastman recreated the camera it was expensive, timely, and very bulky. Only rich people could afford camera equimpment and it was hard to bring anywhere because of how heavy it was. After Eastman’s new camera came out almost everyone could afford one, it was lighter, and much faster. More companies started to get into the camera business and more people became interested in photography. John Rockefeller was an innovator because he made oil a more usable resource. For example oil could now be used for cars and other machines instead of coal, because of this whales stopped getting hunted for whale oil.

Getting chosen to work in the Lowell Mills was a gift many young girls in the New England States initially aspired to achieve. The Lowell Mills was a group of factories built in the 1820’s for the manufacture of textiles (GilderLehrman.org, 2015). Increasing population numbers in the United States required more goods made from cotton that required milling and weaving into useable products. Expanding on roles women performed during the War of 1812 and wanting additional compensation and recognition for their work, young girls left their families and went to work in one of these mills. Enticing the girls with promises of tolerable working conditions, a formal education, and comfortable living quarters, the owners of the factories were able to recruit the girls at a lesser wage than what was paid to men (Tindall & Shi, 2013). Eventually rapid growth and unfavorable working conditions led others to question whether factory work was the proper work environment for young girls.

Due to the growing competition and diminishing market share, companies are opting for different strategies to achieve their survival objectives as well as growth. Companies are thus executing grand strategies to provide their businesses with a clear direction for its strategic actions. These strategies, therefore, aim at both short term and long term sustainability and growth, and they include innovation, market development, product development, and concentration.

While our competitors adopted cost leadership and differentiation strategies, we remained the same in our positioning strategies. We remained defenders of our practices and our competitive prospectors overtook us in the market. On a firm level, strong market commonality and resource similarity put us in a place for direct competition that we distinctively overlooked.

The founder of Kodak, George Eastman, was a photography enthusiast and wanted to simplify the process of creating photos. Eastman established what was to evolve into the Kodak Company in 1880. The Kodak Company was built on four basic

Over the year’s photography has really improved, from heavy wooden boxes to small light weight, portable cameras. But overall, photography was used to create memories, enjoy moment with friends and family’s love. George Eastman, an American Entrepreneur and inventor who created the Kodak company, helping make photography accessible, simple and effortless. George Eastman was born July 12, 1854 in Waterville, New York. Eastman Father ran a business college in Rochester, New York, where his mother took care of him and his two older sisters. His father died when he was seven years old, leaving his mother to take in borderr to support the family, also letting George drop out of high at the age of 14 to add to the family income. Eastman took many

As number of firms in the industry keeps increasing, greater competition force firms to earn more market share, innovate substitutes, produce differentiate products and be cost leadership to keep or improve their position in the industry. For example, some of the products of Billabong and Quiksilver are similar, consumer will choose to buy the one with lower price if they have similar function, or buy the one with higher price if the product is different from others. Thus, a firm could run well if it has different products and lower cost compared with rivals.

Constant technological advances are required to maintain competitive advantage. New and better products are necessary to differentiate

The company had followed its decided strategy from the beginning, which is the broad differentiator, where we compete in every market segment with high quality products. We had price competition in the traditional and low-end market and retained high prices for the other three products. Some key decisions that differentiated our products with the competitors as we progressed

When Kodak began making changes to its organizational architecture in 1984, its current architecture did not fit the business environment for the industry. The largest factor that motivated Kodak to make this change was increased competition and decreased market share. Until the early 1980’s, Kodak owned the film production market with very little competition. This suddenly changed when Fuji Corporation and many other generic store brands began producing high quality film as well (Brickley, 2009, p. 358). Another factor in this change was technology advancements. As technology rapidly expanded in the 1980’s, other

Similarly, both companies had a product differentiation strategy, with the aim of being distinctly set apart from their competitors by the viewing market. However, different elements of this strategy were focused on by the firms. For instance,

The Eastman Kodak Company was established in the 1880’s as a film business, set on establishing its brand name in the marketplace through customer-focused advertising and growth through research and development and low cost mass production. The founder, George Eastman, described Kodak’s competitive philosophy by commenting that “nothing is more important than the value of our name and the quality it stands for. We must make quality our fighting argument” (Gavetti, Henderson & Giorgi, 2005).

Competitive strategy is the moves and methods that the firm has taken and is taking to appeal buyers, improve its market position, and to endure competitive pressures. The strategy is about what a firm’s capability to try to knock off competitors and attain competitive advantage, which can be offensive or defensive. There are three approaches to competitive strategy, which are low-cost leadership strategy where struggling to be the overall low-cost manufacturer in the in industry. Moreover, pursuing to distinguish one’s product offering from competitors (differentiation strategy), and the last one is focus or niche strategy where aiming on thin portion of the market rather than the whole market (Porter, 1998).

Another generic competitive strategy is broad differentiation strategies. According to Thompson, Strickland, and Gamble, in “Crafting and Executing Strategy”, broad differentiation strategy is seeking to differentiate the company’s product offering from rivals in ways that will appear to a brad spectrum of buyers. A company attempting to succeed through differentiation must study buyers’ needs and behavior carefully to learn what buyers consider important, what they think has value, and what they are willing to pay for. Then the company has to incorporate buyer-desired attributes into its product or service offering

Eastman Kodak Company, commonly known as Kodak is an American multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquartered in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1889. Kodak is best known for photographic film products. During most of the 20th century Kodak held a dominant position in this sector. In fact, Eastman Kodak Co. is one of the dominant market share holders within the camera and other photography-related industries. Kodak pioneered amateur photography and is often credited for the invention of roll film and the first camera. The markets for color film and color photofinishing in 1954 were controlled by Kodak. It had over 90% of the amateur color