Strategic Management and Answer Choices

The value chain, made by Michael Porter, is really important to see how a company structure is created. The value chain is constituted by two parts: support activities (firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, procurement) and primary activities (inbound logistic, operations, outbound logistic, marketing and sales, service). (Johnson et al. 2011, p.97-99)

Under Mike Porter’s Value Chain analysis every organization has primary activities and support activities. Primary activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and customer service. Support activities are infrastructure, human resource management, technological development, and procurement. For a conglomerate like Disney creating value is done by leveraging all the outputs of its various segments to benefit the others.

Value chain is a set of activities a company performs in order to provide a valuable solution to their customer problem in their market space or industry. The value chain is made up of primary and support activities. Primary activities being research and development, production, marketing and sales and customer service. These are the primary steps that are required to get a product or service to market to solve the customer problems. Some of the secondary steps include company

32. Supporting activities of the value chain include activities directly involved with marketing, producing, selling, and delivering the product or service to the customer. 
True    False

This report demonstrates the evaluation of current performance of JD Sports Company. Method of Analysis includes Ansoff’s matrix and Porter’s generic growth strategies to discuss the nature of the market which JD Sports invest in. The financial methods are including the flexibility and stability of JD sports which judged by the liquidity, current ratio, operation capital, gearing and profit margin of this company. These figures could be collected from the annual report or balance sheet. This report analyzed the JD sport’s position in the market, and used generic and external growth method to expand market size. Such as acquired a lot stores to improve business profitability. Obviously, JD has expanded to the European

Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies and how the organization decides to implement their goals (Bateman, Snell, Konopaske, pg. 113). Strategies help organizations to have a clear perspective on how to go about accomplishing the goals they have in place. All organizations have a clear vision of what their mission and purpose as a company is, they know how to fulfill the mission, vision, and purpose and they know how to ensure that they accomplish all their goals. However, the route the organization takes to define these things determines how effective they will be.

4. What are the various levels of management, and how do they participate in the process of strategic decision making?

To deal effectively with the wide array of factors affecting the ability of a business to grow and prosper, managers need advanced processes they feel will facilitate the optimal positioning of the business in its competitive environment. Such positioning is possible with strategic management because this process improves preparedness for unexpected internal or competitive demands.

a. How can the company's value-chain activities be better linked to create value for the

The strategic management is actually defined as the process in which an organization actually formats and also implements the plans which espouse the objectives and goals of that organization (Diana Wicks, 2011). The process of the strategic management is continuous and it changes with the evolution of the organizational goals and objectives.

Globalization changes have impacted Burger King in the following ways; since the company began in 1953 with its first restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida and opened several locations across the United States, the company began its international expansion in 1969 with its first international franchise location in Canada, followed by Australia in 1971, and Europe in 1975. The setting up of franchises outside the United States was as a result of fast food opportunities arising outside the United States. So as to fully integrate in the international market, Burger King had to adopt and embrace

ii) Include all primary and support activities that pertain to the organization in the value chain analysis. The activities included will depend on the organization.

Above figure is retrieved from Standard Chartered Bank Value Chain, same as Porter’s value chain, it start with inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales and service. All of those are known as primary value chain. Next will be the support activities that consist of procurement, technological and development, human resources and infrastructure.

Value chain is an approach to know how an item or activities create value for consumers. The most of value provides to consumers, the most of competitive advantage an organization build. In this analysis, value chain model has separated into primary and support activities. Primary activities are included in the physical creation of the item and service. On the other hand, support activities give the inputs and infrastructure that enable the primary activities to happen. This value chain model can be refer to below figure 5.

Within the value chain there are two kind of activity, first one is Primary activity as they are directly related to the product or services that a firm produces to the customers and the other one is secondary activity, these are related to the activities that are within the company infrastructure that assist in the company’s primary activity.