Recommendation Towards Business Planning For Wbl

Michael Porter wrote about five forces affecting the profitability and viability of companies. The five forces are existing competitors, new entries into the market, substitute products, bargaining power of customers, and the bargaining power of suppliers. (quickmba)

The key issue faced by general manager Shelby Givens of Westlake Lanes is whether or not to maintain the current practices of the business or seek new alternatives. She must convince the board that within her allotted one year, progress has been made in improving the business and ultimately convince them that profitability is in the foreseeable future and that their personal debt will be repaid.

Competitive environments are defined by the identity, track record, financial strength and market share of key competitors. Harvard Professor Michael Porter 's Five Forces model can be used to evaluate a company 's competitive position. These five forces are barriers to entry (the ability of new players to enter the market), buyer power (the ability of customers to influence price),

Bargaining Power of Suppliers: The bargaining power of suppliers in the industry is low. There are numerous suppliers in this industry, and the large department stores have the ability to negotiate for the lowest prices. In addition, the switching costs are low, as the products are not highly differentiated. There are a large volume of purchases in the industry, allowing the department stores to exert even more power over the suppliers.

This article was really interesting as it discussed a matrix developed for creating strategies by a professor at Harvard. Michael Porter the creator, discussed the notion of how powerful this tool is because companies or organizations look at competition too narrowly. The five competitive forces include:

Shelby Givens, G.M of WBL could not get the business on track to repay the funds the board had loaned it 16 months before. In Jan 2010, the business profited for the 1st time in two years. But, now she wants to decide on a future direction for the business, so that the debt payment can be speedy and her job gets more interesting. She also deals with multiple external and internal challenges, such as, boosting employee morale, revamping the underperforming F&B section, and growing the customer base.

Bargaining power of supplier: High levels of competition among suppliers act to reduce prices to producers. This is a positive for Ford Motor Company. Standardization of parts allowed Ford to reduce dependency on fixed supplier/vendor which goes into producer’s favor.

The threat of new entrants is moderate. It is relatively easy for a company to enter this market because there are not a lot of legal barriers. But a smaller company that has just entered the market would have a tougher time competing with some of the larger companies – an obvious reason being that larger companies can have larger inventories. Another reason is that larger companies can do things to weaken the smaller companies, such as offer discounts, sales promotions, and increase spending on advertising. Since most of the companies in this industry are competing on

The competitive forces that shape company strategy are very important to consider in any organization. However, they are especially important when an organization’s forces fall closer to the “intense” side on the scale between “intense forces” and “benign forces.” “Almost no company earns attractive returns on investment” when forces are intense, like those in industries that sell luxury goods. (Porter, 2008). Yet, Robert Mondavi’s wineries have leveraged the five forces (barriers to entry, bargaining power of suppliers/buyers, threat of substitutes, and competitive rivalry) in order to maintain consistent profits. The five forces are discussed in detail below with the level of importance increasing throughout the descriptions.

In the five forces model by Porter, four forces will influence the fifth one (see the model on the right). The bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of customers, the threat of substitute products and the threat of new entrants will influence the fifth force: the level of competition in the industry (S.Clegg, C.Carter, M.Kornberger, & J.Scheitzer, 2011).

As we begin to strategically plan for our business, it is important for us to take a deep dive into our competitive environment to understand where we are strong competitively and where we are weak competitively. An analysis of the forces driving industry competition using M.E. Porter’s Five Forces Model will assist us in determining where the power lies in a business situation as we begin to plan. We must understand how they work in our industry and how they affect our particular situation. Whatever the collective strength of these forces is, our job as the strategists of the organization is to

The rivalry among competing sellers, often the strongest competitive pressure, is also fairly high for Panera in the restaurant industry. No switching costs, numerous competitors, and an increase in the availability of healthy food

Supplier Power: This highlights that it is easy for suppliers to rise up their prices. This is determined by the number of suppliers, the uniqueness of their product, their control over the buyer, and the cost of changing from one buyer to another. The scarcer the supplier choices you might have, and the more you need the help and that

Bargaining power of suppliers is low due to large number of suppliers of raw materials, low switching cost and availability of attractive substitutes. (Jim Wilkinson, 2013) Therefore, we could control the price of raw materials because we can easily switch to different suppliers with lower price and higher quality, increasing our profit consequently.

Porter's fifth force that Porter describes is current rivalry among existing firms. In the specialty eateries industry,