Using Value-Chain Analysis to Discover Customers' Strategic Needs

Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (2011). Essentials of strategic management (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Conducting a value chain analysis provides a snapshot for identifying a firm’s relative competitive performance, core competencies, and for focusing on customer centric activities. Costco’s customer driven focus allows primary and support business activities to work in unity creating a stronger competitive advantage and thereby increasing profitability. Profitability and shareholder value rely on coordination of both sets of business activities to create a firm’s competitive advantage.

Ferrell, O.C., & Hartline, M.D. (2014). Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases (6th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning

G.G. Dess, G.T. Lumpkin, M.L. Taylor, A.A. Thompson, and A.J. Strickland III, Strategic Management (Boston, McGraw Hill, 2004) pp. 141-148.

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)

Pearce, J. A. & Robinson, R. B. (2013). Strategic Management: Planning for Domestic and Global Competition (13th ed). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Pearce, J. A., II, Robinson, R. B. (2011). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control (12th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Kerin, R. A., & Robert A. Peterson. (2013). Strategic Marketing Problems: Cases and Comments. Pearson Education Limited.

Value Chain analysis evaluates each step business goes through from inception to finality. The goal is to maximize the value for the total cost. Costco's mission is to provide their members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices. The company’s mission, values and strategies suggest Costco uses a broad enterprise strategy which fits in the societal framework. To ensure employee motivation, Costco offers them a unique banquet of benefits. This include; paying health benefits for them, 50% higher wage, employee retention of over 90 percent, and maintaining employees even during recession periods (Costco, 2010). The Company’s strength is its primary value chains which split into two distinct functions: Demand fulfilment and Demand generation. Demand fulfilment includes input logistics, operations, and output logistics. Demand generation involves sales, marketing, and service department which breaks down into sub-tiers. Costco’s support activities include HRM, technology development, firm infrastructure and procurement. Costco’s weaknesses are difficult to pinpoint; one weakness is persistent low operating profit margins. Bigger profits can occur by not paying employee benefits and with demanding higher returns from their suppliers. The problem would be at what cost?  Costco receives cost advantages from value adding major (brand items) activities. However, it continues to experience a challenge

Perreault, Jr., W.D., Cannon, J.P., & McCarthy, E.J. (2011). Basic Marketing: A Marketing Strategy Planning Approach [University of Phoenix Custom Edition eBook]. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, MKT/421 website.

Today’s market demands organizations to have a strategic plan. The purpose of the strategic plan describes where the organization wants their organization to go. A strategic plan is a document used to communicate goals, and the actions needed to achieve those goals. In order to remain competitive every organization needs to innovate to stay ahead of the competition. They need to develop new products and services with increasing frequency. The design of these new products and services must meet, or exceed, customer expectations and at the same time, they must generate an acceptable financial return for the organization. However, any business that does not realize the importance of developing new products will not last very long as a consequence

 ReferencesKerin, R. A., Peterson, R. A. (2013). Strategic marketing problems cases and comments (13th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall

Value chain analysis looks at every step a business goes through, from raw materials to the eventual end-user. The goal is to deliver maximum value for the least possible total cost. It is a systematic approach to examining the development of competitive advantage. The most basic breakdown of primary functions includes inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, sales and marketing and service. People should use the other models and frameworks within this software to further differentiate between, and add to, these domains. Product Innovation is one area that is not normally included in the de jure model but is often included in the de facto model. Value Chain Analysis describes the activities that take place in

A value chain is a chain of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product or service for the market. The concept comes from business management and was first described and popularized by Michael Porter (Porter, 2013)

A strategy can be identified as a roadmap that will guide one to the desired destination whether close or far. (Kotler, P. 2012) Michael Porter one of the greatest minds of the marketing field has founded a pattern in order to develop both an achievable and highly dependable strategy elements: Overall cost leadership,