Intopia Report

The company started off producing 20,000 units of mountain bikes. We did not change the production quantity. Last year our forecast sales were 24,000 when we only sold 19,866; therefore we thought it would be best to leave production at 20,000 bikes. Having excess inventory, we concluded that 20,000 units should be enough considering our quality has not changed and our advertising will not increase the sales dramatically. Although we had the choice to produce as much as 30,000 units, we felt as though we did not have sufficient money to increase production. We were interested in allocating the money towards marketing as opposed to production. We realized that without awareness, no matter how many units we make, sales would be inefficient.

Vertical integration- a company controlled all parts of production from raw mats to the finished goods

We adjusted focus to our niche market, sold off capacity in the low end and traditional markets, and proceeded to decrease our production going into the next round. While selling capacity was the correct financial decision to combat our emergency loan, we were then left with stock outs in all of our product lines. As a result, we continued to struggle with overproduction and avoiding stock outs, but made improvements resulting in less drastic inventory swings in the later

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.

Along with capacity, we also made it a focus to limit the amount of overtime and second shift workers. This kept our costs down and our profit margin wider. We paid attention to our inventory on hand and made sure to not schedule more production than was needed. Towards the later rounds, we really seemed to grasp the idea of the game, which can be seen in our large increase in profitability. In the Finance portion, we borrowed money in the first five weeks to pay off our current debt. As the game got into the later rounds we began paying off our current and long term debt because our profits were increasing at a higher rate. Overall, we believe that our group had a decent understanding of the concepts as we finished with high market share and profits.

The current strategy of the company is to enter foreign markets and to succeed there. The corporate main strategy is to provide high quality product to its customers.

To develop such strategy mix of strategic options will be applied including Integration to deal with competition and Intensive + Diversification strategies for product and market development.

The industry witnessed several industry level stock outs, because of low production capacities. Ideally most should have been made of the situation. We should have seen the opportunities and worked to achieve way beyond our set goals.

Corporate-level strategies are liable for market definition; they address the entire scope of the business. This strategy helps a business to diversify its service. It gives them direction in which geographic region they should operate and which service markets to strive in. “Thus, an effective corporate-level strategy creates, across all of a firm’s businesses, aggregate returns that exceed what those

Our firm has set out to Internationalise its operations by opening to different facilities One in China Assembling and Maintaining Aircraft Engines and the other in Europe fabricating turbine blades for Aircraft

Haier catapulted in the last two decades producing consumer products that are sold in similar fashion. They all shared distribution channels, outbound logistics, and sales forces. Haier was able to develop core competencies through effective activity sharing of primary activities resulting in a superb competitive advantage, ultimately creating value. CEO Zhang Ruimin realized that using both strategies’ can work in Haier’s favor with the ultimate goal of getting name recognition globally. His related diversification strategy used

A company won’t integrate vertically its production if it against its business interest. There are some vertically

Product diversification is a feasible way to obtain growth through new products. The company can use existing product knowledge to develop the brand into new lines to increase exposure and use similar technology to increase synergies. Leveraging off an existing well-known brand to a market that is familiar with the brand will also increase the possibility of success while maintaining lower marketing costs in

Define the situation (case summary) Define the major issues, conflicts, and the network . Describe the options (alternatives) for solving these issues. Several internal and external influences serve as contributing factors in the reconsideration of the company’s current system. Changes in customer demands, domestic and global competition, and a unique decentralized management system is now forcing the Westminster Company to reevaluate their traditional supply chain practices. (Bowersox & M.B., 2014) Westminster’s domestic operations consist of three separate companies that sell and distribute products to several of the same customers. (Bowersox & M.B., 2014) At first glance consolidation of the systems can significantly improve

I. Introduction 1. There are several basic approaches to competing successfully and gaining a competitive advantage, but they all involve giving buyers what they perceive as superior value compared to the offerings of rival sellers. 2. This chapter describes the five basic competitive strategy option for building competitive advantage and delivering superior value to customers – which of the five to