Strategic Analysis Of The HMV Group

The business I have chosen for this investigation is ASDA superstore. This is a large chain of supermarkets throughout Britain which retails clothes, merchandise, food, and electronics etc. in this part of my course work I will briefly explain the aims and objectives of ASDA I will also explain the external factors which affect the aims and objectives of the business however I will first be talking about a brief history of ASDA.

Located in Woodgrove Mall in Nanaimo, British Columbia, directly across from the busiest part of the mall sits HMV Canada. HMV, which stands for “His Master’s Voice” (HMV, 2014) is a music retailer with over 80 years of experience. They specialize in music, DVD’s, headphones, memorabilia, and more. Although they have 80 plus years of retail experience they have only been in the Canadian market since 1988. What is interesting is the fact they are owned by a

PART 2 - Task 1 a) Produce a leaflet or advert for customers giving information about products or services HMV offer. b) Choose a real example of an external corporate communication from HMV. In a Memo to your manager evaluate it as a means of corporate communication. (Remember not all such communications are effective) c) Then evaluate the effectiveness of the business organisation and its communication and the role it has played in the success of this company. You must include examples to illustrate your point.Tip; investigate other organisations that have excellent communication and information systems and use them for comparison with your organisation.

It is common industry knowledge that an audit plan provides the specific guidelines auditors must follow when conducting an external audit. External public accounting firms conduct external audits to ensure outside stakeholders that the company’s financial statements are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) standards.

Porter’s Five Forces is defined as threats of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, power of buyers, the threat of substitutes and rivalry among existing competitors. New entrants into the industry aim to gain market share from rivals, so the intensity of competition may require to make changes on current strategy of marketing to maintain existing market share. The bargaining

The ‘five forces’ model was created by Michael Porter of Harvard University and consists of three horizontal forces of competition, as well as two vertical forces of competition. The horizontal forces of competition are comprised of: 1) the threat of new entrants; 2) the threat of rivals who have already been established; and 3) the threat of substitute services or products. The vertical forces of competition include the bargaining power of customers, as well as the bargaining power of suppliers.

To begin, we are going to summarize Porter’s Five Forces and analyze the market that surrounds ALDI, a grocery store which is in competition with other grocery providers. We will be specifically looking at the target customers, suppliers, substitutes and competitors for this industry. Of the five forces: bargaining power of suppliers and customers, threats of substitutes and new competitors, and competitor rivalry, we will first explain competitor rivalry.

By the time HMV caught up with other industry rivals such as Amazon it was too late to compete with ideas such as the ‘click and collect’ service where you order a product online and then collect it in store. If HMV where to open back up they would need to have strong online presence by allowing customers to have access to buying goods online. Ireland is the 2nd largest developed online market in Europe with Irish consumers spending 420million online coming up to Christmas alone, so it is crucial to HMV to operate online if they were to reopen. (Cullen, D. 2012)

Table 2: Scenario framework analyse business environment and its uncertainty variables, either for rapid change or complexity.

The marketing environment at the present situation is very competitive. Companies like Apple with iTunes store, Amazon with lots of music, movies, games and every other product that HMV sells, and many other international companies making way to UK for their business, HMV need to stand out from each one of them to continue making good business. For this they might need to make some minor as well as some major changes within company to keep on attracting customers. Lots of people have now started buying music and movies through internet via iTunes store and Amazon stores because they are very easy and less time consuming ever. HMV is facing competition from these and many other companies on its business. These companies are making it much easier for customers to shop from home and save time. HMV also has its online market but it is not as strong as the others. One reason behind it may be not going global. HMV is always trying to attract customers to their physical stores rather than the internet stores making it more interesting to the customers to shop. But this might not always be the case. Some customers may not have time to go for interesting shopping in this very busy world. So not losing its focus on physical stores it also needs to look forward to competition in the virtual internet

There will be 2 parts to external analysis; it will be done based on general environment and competitive environment. External analysis is basically analyzing the factors that are not within the control of an organization for the general environment part. As for the competitive environment part, the strength of an organization’s current competitive position, and the strength of a position it is considering moving into will be identified to help prepare itself for every possible happenings in the near future.

Internal auditors cannot effectively provide an analysis on the company’s internal dealings as they are part of the company. External auditors, however, can observe these processes from the outside and then determine where the funds of the company and whether the dealings adhere to the regulations. Using external auditors in a company prevents conflict of interest from happening. Conflict of interest is a situation where an individual or organization has multiple interests and of those multiple interests, one could possible corrupt the motivation for an act on the other when the auditor has any kind of beneficial interest in their client’s performance. In other circumstances, there is also the threat of familiarity where auditors become

An analysis of the external environment includes the factors in a business’s external environment about a business's industry, competition, and political and social environments, and affects the firm’s strategy (Aaker, 2001).

According to the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), (2011), the internal auditing is a team of consultants, a department and a division or other practitioner which independent, have objective assurance and conduct a consulting activity which is designed to add value and improve the organization operations. The internal auditor can help an organization in achieving its objectives by bringing a discipline and systematic approach in order to improve and evaluate the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance process.

The role of internal audit is to provide independent declaration that an organization’s threatadministration, governance and internal control processes are functioning effectively. Internal auditors deal with concerns that are essentially important to the existence and success of any organization. Unlike external auditors, they aspect beyond financial possibilities and statements to reflect wider problems such as the organization’s reputation, development, its power on the location and the approach it treats its organizations.In summary, internal accountantssupport organizations to thrive.