Rogers' Chokolates

Success of any businesses organization is determined by factors such as financial, management & operational. Financial factors address use of capital in business and flow of cash through various processes within the organization. Management factors are linked to organizational structure of the enterprise. Whereas operational factors address how available resources are used to achieve objective of the organization. Apart from these three factors, environmental factors like competition also determine success of any business organization. This paper explores transformation that Rogers’ Chocolate Company has undergone since its establishment. The paper also investigates competitive strategy of the company against its close

Michael Porter developed five different forces in a framework he felt influenced industries. This framework was designed to help companies find ways to off-set a rival company and to help develop a more solid business plan. It has been known over the years a rivalry has existed been two of the biggest soda companies, Coca Cola and Pepsi. Three of Porter’s forces that are exemplified in this “coke war” are buyer power, barriers to entry, and rivalry which will be explained and elaborated on in the following essay.

Core capabilities support competitive advantage and are hard to copy (CWMIF, 2012). Hamel and Prahalad (1990) stated strategic objectives should generate new competitive space. They should look to the future rather than glance back on the past (Vliet, 2014).

Zappos, as the first and the world’s largest online shoes retailer, has developed a high quality experience and delivered “wow” to customers. It has established a strong relationship with customer and stick to bring the store to the customer’s home. It has used less twenty yeas to become a profitable company holding an outstanding reputation for customer service and its employee are passionately engage in their works. In this paper, I aimed to analyze the relationship between strategic capabilities and performance in Zappos’s success. The business environment is not constant rather than changeable, so how Zappos goes ahead of revival and forms its unique competency advantages. I will utilize VRIO test to detect the company’s level of competitive advantage. In addition, I will continually combine Barney’ theory of resource based view(RBV) with Zappos to identified which resources it processes and how Zappos used those to form its core competency.

VRIO analysis is a suitable strategic tool that is essential in evaluating the sustainability of a corporation’s competitive advantage. By analyzing the capabilities and resources of a firm, the management is able to identify the suitable approaches of increasing the firm’s market share and broadening the consumer base. One of the key elements encompassed in the VRIO framework entails the value of the identified capabilities and resources. In order to acquire a sustainable competitive advantage over other participants in the targeted market, a company ought to focus on the resources that increase a firm’s value. This includes the firm’s ability to exploit the available business opportunities and mitigate the potential risks.

Adapted with the permission of Michael E. Porter from Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior

The resource audit, value chain analysis and core competence analysis help to define the strategic capabilities of a

This theory was published for the first time in 1985 inside one of the Porter’s greatest work: “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.” In fact, the Porter’s Value Chain is a good tool through which evaluate the organization’s ability in achieving the competitive advantage and if achieved, this tool is useful to measure the quantity of this advantage. A business should focus on one of the primary activities in order to create an advantage in that. Moreover, the value chain can be used also to evaluate and determine which strategy is the best for a company to gain the competitive advantage.

2016). Companies in the same industry can also struggle maintaining its competitive advantage because of their exposure to similar opportunities and threats in their market area (Rothaermel 2017). Hence, it is necessary for the companies to analyse their internal resources and capabilities that form their core competencies (Rothaermel 2017). It has been studied that a company’s differentiating internal environment accounts for more than half of its success (Rothaermel 2017). This resource-based view enables the company to identify their strength and weaknesses for strategic competitiveness (Rothaermel 2017). An analysis of a company’s external opportunities and threats in combination with its resources and capabilities propels activities for strategic manoeuvre (Hanson et al. 2016). This, in-turn, creates pathway for above-average returns (AAR) (Hanson et al.

Organizations gain a competitive advantage by utilizing their rare and valuable resources. These rare resources may either be tangible, such as machinery and equipment, intangible, for instance brand names, money, customer knowledge, or they may be in the form of human assets possessed by the organization. Ongoing capabilities, actions and prior investments of an organization are what give rise to resources. Moreover, resources may be relational, legal, reputational, physical, human or knowledge and informational.

The conception of core competencies evolved from the resource- primarily based view of the firm that emphasised the actual fact that competitive advantage rests on the firm’s possession of distinctive difficult to imitate skills, knowledge, resources and competencies (Wernerfelt, 1984; Rumelt, 1984). These causally ambiguous irreproducible core capabilities serve to provide sustainable competitive advantage to the firm. This view emerged as a counterpoint to market structure analysis of competitive strategy. A firm’s core competencies are so outlined as a set of downside shaping and problem-solving insights that foster the development of idiosyncratic strategic growth alternatives (Lei, Hitt and Bettis, 1996). according to Hamel and Prahalad (1990), core competencies have three basic characteristics: they provide access to a large type of markets, contribute considerably to the end product

Finally, Mr. Porter identified the forms of "rivalry among existing competitors" such as cutting prices, development of new products, and improving services. He believes that the impact of rivalry is dependent on two factors, "intensity" and "basis" of

If only to understand the macro environment and industry environment is not enough to plan successful strategies. The firm must analyze its internal organization to determine what it can do (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2013). Resources, capabilities, and core competencies are the fundamental factors creating competitive advantage to take up the market share. Through processing organization’s resources, the firm shapes organizational capabilities. In turn, basing on capabilities, firm’s core competencies are set, which help the company establish competitive advantages rivaling other companies (Ndofor, Sirmon and He, 2011).

Porter’s five forces is an effective tool used to analyse competitive markets. Porter’s five forces looks at different aspects which the business interacts with daily such as the supplier Power, Buyer power, competitive rivalry , the threat of substitute products and services and the threat of new entrants. These aspects reside in the macro-environment; therefore the business has no control over these aspects. However, KFC and Nando’s may influence these aspects and these aspects also influence the business. Problems experienced in the macro environment can contribute to the success of the business. This tool was developed by Michael Porter for analysing the industry within which the business operates. This tool is very useful as it looks at the industry within which the business is operating as a whole.

A central aspect of the dynamic problem facing a business in an evolving and competitive industry is the decision about additions to productive capacity. The purpose of this report is to provide strategic advice for the CEO of Bonkers Chocolate Factory (BCF), the U.S division of a multi-national candy company operating in the highly competitive chocolate products market.