Employing Strategy in a Competitive Environment

Environmental scanning involves an organization to look at any trend, opportunity or threat that could create issues for their company. Once any of these issues are identified, the organization should consider new strategies that react to these external factors. Issues should be examined that involve not only direct customers and suppliers, but also competitors, any changes in regulations and possible political involvement. External factors will be constantly changing so environmental scanning should occur frequently and regularly to ensure the current issues have been captured. Research and data analysis can help drive decisions regarding overall marketing changes that might be necessary.

(Kerin, Hartley, & Rudelius, 2010). These trends normally consist of five sources, social, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory forces. My intention in this essay is to focus on one; the economic environmental force. I will discuss how the current state of the economy will impact completing an environmental scan. In order to evaluate how the economy will impact the completion of an environmental scan, it is essential to cover the concerns that affect the economic aspect whether people want to believe

In present it is very essential to cancern about ecological and pysical environment as a business organization. Because most of the customers and environmentalists are attempting to protect the pysical enviroment from the cost of producing and marketing products. They are particularly concern about five majer issues in the pysical enviroment such as:

The environment of any organization consists of internal and external factors. An organization should conduct a scan of its environment in order for it to determine development, and a forecast on the factors that may influence the success of the organization. Scanning the environment refers to the possession and utilization of the information that an organization has about trends, patterns, occasion and the external and internal relationship that are within an organization. A scan of the environment may assist the management team of an organization in making a decision about the future path of the

However, there is a slightly different view on that presented by Boone and Kurtz (2011, p.61). They argue that the main purpose of environmental scanning is to identify the present trends and the extent to which they affect the company. If any trend provides an opportunity or poses a real threat to the business, appropriate action should follow.

All companies are affected by external factors. In order for a company to sustain or gain a competitive advantage it must constantly analyze its threats

To identify multiple approaches to solve a problem and to skillfully convert relevant information to later on contribute to deeper understanding are two goals for myself to acquire as a future music teacher. In the Problem Solving Rubric, the milestone for Identifying Strategies is to “identify multiple approaches for solving the problem that apply within a specific context.” This skill is important to have, especially as an educator. All students don’t learn the same way, and each have their own tempo on how they learn and absorb information. Having the ability to identify problems in multiple ways can add to my flexibility as a teacher; knowing how to present knowledge to another student in a different way when a first strategy wasn’t successful.

Fast and Furious will employ a global low-cost leadership strategy and pursue a competitive advantage by having lower costs and selling entry level cameras at low prices relative to rivals. We designed our cameras with basic features and mid level product enhancements, to produce a two star level product. Some of these specifications include 8mm image sensors, 230k pixel lcd display screens, 2704x1520 pix image quality, etc. By producing a lower quality camera, we were able to manufacture and sell our product at a lower cost. This allowed us to gain a competitive advantage and outsell our competitors from the get-go. Many of our competitors adopted this strategy later in the simulation,

Environmental scanning plays a critical role in the strategic management planning process. The environmental scan provides important information, which may be useful in forecasting changes for the future.

-The costs which can be borne, and the investment required to compete in the industry.

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).

Michael E. Porter, associate professor published the article titled “How Competitive Forces shape Strategy” in Harvard Business Review in 1979. This article is retitled as “The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy” and published in Harvard Business Review in 2008. Michael E. Porter developed the model of Five Competitive Forces which is defined as “Competitive Strategy – Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors”. It has become a main device for analyzing an organizations structure in strategic practices.

Porter set out to define a strategic model to which all companies conform. He maintained that failing to fit into one of his pre-defined categories “the firm stuck in the middle is almost guaranteed low profitability.” (Porter, 1980). The pre-defined categories are noted in appendix 1.

There are two types of environmental factors, internal and external. External environments are the forces and events outside a company that have the capability to influence or effect it. There are two types of change, which are stable Environments and dynamic environments. In stable, the rate of change is slow and the basic business functions change little over a long period of time. In Dynamic, the rate of change is fast, one can use the Smartphone business as a perfect example. Every year they release a new model with new technology and every year the environment of the market is changing and expanding. One might think that a company is either stable or dynamic, but in actuality, most companies go through periods of both phases. According to punctuated equilibrium theory, companies go through long periods of stability when small change happens, followed by short, complex periods of fundamental change; and finishing with a return to stability. Another characteristic of external environments is resource scarcity which is the abundance or shortage of important resources for an organization. Let’s say I am running a farm and there is a water shortage, this would affect how much I am producing and at what cost I would charge.

Organizations successful at strategy implementation effectively manage six key supporting factors :     1.  Action Planning