Maytag Corporation 2002:Focus on North America

By upgrading their brand, it will help to identify the qualities of the products that set it apart from the competition. They have to make the

The major dilemma at hand is avoiding a takeover. The economy was bad at the time, and the company's stock price was thought to be undervalued, as their low P/E ratio of 13.3 indicated. Management needs to find out why their stock price is so undervalued.

profitability, slowing demand growth and a surge in private label sales threatened to undermine the

The Innovative A’s Consulting Group is glad to run our analysis on your company’s operational process. Your company has done tremendous progress and indeed it is a recommendable success as it started out small and grew to be one of the leading businesses in the industry. In our analysis over the past two weeks, we observed that, if planned well, CanGo has a promising future ahead. Our team came up with certain issues being faced by your company, which we assume, if not resolved, can cause a problem in the long run for CanGo to be more successful. Your company has been lucky over the past few years, but in our evaluation, we concluded that CanGo’s future needs a great deal of strategic planning. By carefully

3. The marketing strategy of company is not so convincing because they can extend their product range with good

2. What do the results say about how firms in this industry can deliver strong financial returns in different ways?

1. From a strategic management standpoint, why do you think that corporate management at Alcoa delayed taking action for five years as the plant continued to lose money and deteriorate in other operational measures?

3. What strategies could Adesemi have applied to overcome its operational problems once they occurred? What strategies might the company have applied prior to its investment?

2. Acquisitions Staples’s revenue was twice the OD’s revenue, OD could merge with Office Max in order to compete with Staples at the same level. In addition, after that the alliance could integrate the source effectively and efficiently and cut more operating cost.

3. What is your assessment of the competitive strength of Kraft Foods’ different business units?

If asked what you know about Maytag's marketing program, the first thing to come to mind would probably be its "lonely repairman" ad campaigns. For 35 years, those ads have helped position Maytag as a reliable brand for major appliances. Gordon Jump, an actor who really was a former Maytag repairman, played the lonely repairman role in ads for 14 years. In 2004, another veteran character actor, Hardy Rawls, took on that job. Although Maytag's basic positioning has been consistent over many years, marketing managers at Maytag are constantly developing new marketing strategies. So let's take a closer look at what they did in one innovative strategy-planning process that resulted in profitable growth for

3. Describe the competitive strategies used by each of Williams-Sonoma’s competitors. Which of these are most effective?

a) The first involved the disparity in the exposure that her product received and the availability of the product itself. From a logistical perspective, the challenge for her was how to continue to generate buzz and interest in the product prior to the actual ability to develop, manufacture, market and sell the product.

1. Expanded into new o/s markets and diversified its product range, making the company less susceptible to sudden swings in demand in a single market or for a single product.

5) Another example of creating value by using a related diversification strategy was when Haier applied innovation to product design and production from the Liebherr Corporation of Germany. This strategic move created value by not only competing and expanding its product categories, but also by creating market needs. (pg. 7) The activity sharing and market need helped create product breakthroughs like washing machines that operated without detergent or water, and refrigerators that needed no compressors. (pg. 8) Another example of creating value was when Haier entered a strategic business alliance with Sanyo. Sanyo wanted to increase its competiveness in China taking advantage of Haier’s extensive distribution network, whereas Haier hoped to enter the Jampanese market by utilizing Sanyo’s distribution and service centres’s. (pg. 12) In the end Zhang Ruimin utilized this diversification strategy in an attempt to gain market power. B.Also discuss how Haier can use unrelated diversification strategy to create value.