MGT490 Saudi Electronic Case Study In Management: AutoZone hi,This assignment in management 101, It’s a case study In yellow highlight ( word or PDF ). It’
MGT490 Saudi Electronic Case Study In Management: AutoZone hi,This assignment in management 101, It’s a case study In yellow highlight ( word or PDF ). It’s 5 question, you can find questions under question file ( word sheet ).I want full mark, so I’m looking for special tutor in management who can guarantee full mark with no plagiarism, no matching.Review case study and question before accept assignment.Regards… ASSIGNMENT-2
Principles of Management (MGT490)
2nd Semester (2018-2019)
Assignment Workload:
This Assignment consists of a Caselet.
Assignment is to be submitted by each student individually.
Assignment Purposes/Learning Outcomes:
After completion of Assignment-2 students will able to understand the
Apply knowledge and techniques of strategic planning and decision
making. (Lo2.1)
Apply knowledge and function effectively on teamwork activities,
management skills to create a development plan (Lo3.4)
Answer questions related to case study.
Assignment Regulation:
All students are encouraged to use their own words.
Student must apply Times New Roman Font with 1.5 space within their
reports.
A mark of zero will be given for any submission that includes copying
from other resource without referencing it.
Assignment -2 should be submitted on or before the end of Week-11.
If the assignment shows more than 25% plagiarism, the students would be
graded zero.
Assignment Structure:
A.No
Assignment-1
Total
Type
Caselet
Marks
7
7
Assignment-1
Please go to Chapter 6 Strategic Management available in your
textbook Management: A Practical Approach 7th edition by Kinicki, A.,
& Williams, B., at the end of the Chapter read Case: Putting AutoZone
into Drive and answer the following questions:
Assignment Questions:
Q1. Using no more than two sentences, describe AutoZone’s strategy. (1 Mark)
Q2. Based on Michael Porter’s discussion of the characteristics of an effective
strategy, does AutoZone have a good strategy for growth? Explain. (2 Marks)
Q3. To what extent is AutoZone following the five steps of the strategicmanagement process? (1 Mark)
Q4. Conduct an environmental scan or SWOT analysis of AutoZone’s current
reality and recommend whether the company’s current strategy is poised to
succeed. (2 Marks)
Q5. What is the greatest takeaway from this case in terms of strategic
management? (1 Mark)
Due date for the submission of Assignment-1:
Assignment -2 should be posted in the Black Board by Week-9.
The due date for the submission of Assignment-2 is end of Week 11.
Instructions for the students:
Assignment has to be in Word format only.
1. First page of the assignment is the cover page, it should be filled with
? Course Code (MGT490)
Management) and CRN-
and
? Student Name and ID. Number
Course
Title
(Principles
of
? Date of Submission
2. Second page should be Assignment question
3. After the question page then present your answer
4. Finally your file should be saved as Word Doc like ID.NO- MGT490 A-2
STUDENT NAME.doc [only CAPITAL LETTERS]
[Example.] 170058384-MGT490 A-2 BANDAR ALGHAMDI.doc
Page 158
Major Questions You Should Be Able to Answer
6.1 What Is Effective Strategy?
o
6.2 The Strategic-Management Process
o
Major Question: What are the characteristics of good mission and vision
statements?
6.4 Assessing the Current Reality
o
Major Question: What’s the five-step recipe for the strategic-management
process?
6.3 Establishing the Mission & the Vision
o
Major Question: What is strategic positioning, and what are the three principles
that underlie it?
Major Question: What tools can help me describe where the organization stands
from a competitive point of view?
6.5 Formulating the Grand Strategy
o
Major Question: How can three techniquesPorter’s four competitive strategies,
diversification and synergy, and the BCG matrixhelp me formulate strategy?
6.6 Implementing & Controlling Strategy: Execution
o
Major Question: How does effective execution help managers during the
strategic-management process?
Page 159
the manager’s toolbox
Being a Successful Manager: Look beyond the Fads, Be Willing to Make Painful Decisions
How can we build organizations that are as nimble as change itselfnot only operationally, but
strategically? asks management professor Gary Hamel.1
Many people deal with uncertainty by succumbing to fads, or short-lived enthusiasms, suggests
the author of a book on why smart people fall for fads.2 A fad, he says, is seen as the way of the
future, a genuine innovation that will help solve a big problem.
A lot of the attraction of a fad
is that if you embrace it early, then you feel that you’re ahead of other people, that you’re hipper
and maybe smarter than they are.3
Fads are evident in the stream of business books touting the newest cure-all. Still, some ideas
that started out as management fads survive. Why? Because they’ve been found to actually work.
One of these is strategic planning, as we describe in this chapter.
Two lessons of successful managers:
Lesson 1In an Era of Management Fads, Strategic Planning Is Still Tops
Business consultant Bain & Company annually conducts a survey on the most popular
management tools. The 2013 survey found that the most widely used management tool in 2012
was used 12 or even 14 years earliernamely, strategic planning, thought to be effective by
about 80% of the senior managers surveyed. The use of mission and vision statements also
continued to be popular, also favored by about 80%.4 Strategic planning is concerned with
developing a comprehensive program for long-term success. Mission statements describe the
organization’s purpose and vision statements describe its intended long-term goal. Successful
managers know how to use all of them.
Lesson 2Managers Must Be Willing to Make Painful Decisions to Suddenly Alter Strategy
Another lesson is that in a world of discontinuous change, managers must always be prepared to
make large, painful decisions and radically alter their business designexiting businesses,
firing people, admitting you were wrong (or at least not omniscient), as writer Geoffrey Colvin
puts it. So the future will demand ever more people with the golden trait, the fortitude to accept
and even seek psychic pain.5
For Discussion Earlier we described the importance of practicing evidence-based management,
with managers seeing the truth as a moving target, always facing the hard facts, avoiding falling
prey to half-truths, and being willing to admit when they’re wrong and change their ways.6 Do
you think you would have this mind-set when thinking about the overall direction of your
organization or work unit?
forecast What’s Ahead in This Chapter
We begin by discussing strategic positioning and the five steps in the strategic-management
process. We then describe competitive intelligence, SWOT analysis, forecasting, benchmarking,
and Porter’s model for industry analysis. We next consider Porter’s four competitive strategies,
single-product versus diversification strategies, and the BCG matrix. Finally, we discuss
execution.
Page 160
6.1 What Is Effective Strategy?
MAJOR QUESTION
What is strategic positioning, and what are the three principles underlying it?
THE BIG PICTURE
Strategic positioning attempts to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by preserving what
is distinctive about a company. It is based on the principles that strategy is the creation of a
unique and valuable position, requires trade-offs in competing, and involves creating a fit
among activities.
Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter is the single most important strategist
working today, and maybe of all time, raved Kevin Coyne of consulting firm McKinsey & Co.7
He is the most famous and influential business professor who has ever lived, says Fortune
writer Geoffrey Colvin. He is widely and rightly regarded as the all-time greatest strategy
guru.8
Strategy guru. Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter suggests that every company
is subject to five forces: its current competitors, possible new competitors, the threat of
substitutes for its products or services, the bargaining power of its suppliers, and the bargaining
power of its customers. Operating within that five-forces framework, a company must choose the
right strategyor be beaten by competitors. Do you think there are other forces that are equally
important in forming strategy?
Is this high praise deserved? Certainly Porter’s status as a leading authority on competitive
strategy is unchallenged. The Strategic Management Society, for instance, voted Porter the most
influential living strategist. We refer to him repeatedly in this chapter.
Strategic Positioning & Its Principles
According to Porter, strategic positioning attempts to achieve sustainable competitive
advantage by preserving what is distinctive about a company. It means, he says,
performing different activities from rivals, or performing similar activities in different ways.9
Three key principles underlie strategic positioning:10
1. Strategy Is the Creation of a Unique & Valuable Position Strategic position emerges from
three sources:
Few needs, many customers. Strategic position can be derived from serving the few
needs of many customers. Example: Jiffy Lube provides only lubricants, but it provides
them to all kinds of people with all kinds of motor vehicles.
Broad needs, few customers. A strategic position may be based on serving the broad
needs of just a few customers. Example: Wealth management and investment advisory
firm Bessemer Trust focuses exclusively on highnet worth clients.
Broad needs, many customers. Strategy may be oriented toward serving the broad
needs of many customers. Example: National movie theater operator Carmike Cinemas
operates only in cities with populations of fewer than 200,000 people.
2. Strategy Requires Trade-offs in Competing As a glance at the preceding choices shows, some
strategies are incompatible. Thus, a company has to choose not only what strategy to follow but
what strategy not to follow. Example: Neutrogena soap, points out Porter, is positioned more as a
medicinal product than as a cleansing agent. In achieving this narrow positioning, the company
gives up sales based on deodorizing, gives up large volume, and accordingly gives up some
manufacturing efficiencies.
Page 161
3. Strategy Involves Creating a Fit among Activities Fit has to do with the ways a company’s
activities interact and reinforce one another. Example: A mutual fund such as Vanguard Group
follows a low-cost strategy and aligns all its activities accordingly, distributing funds directly to
consumers and minimizing portfolio turnover. However, when the short-lived (19931995)
Continental Lite airline tried to match some but not all of Southwest Airlines’ activities, it was
not successful because it didn’t apply Southwest’s entire interlocking system.
Does Strategic Management Work for Small as Well as Large Firms?
You would expect that a large organization, with its thousands of employees and even larger
realm of stakeholders, would benefit from strategic management and planning. After all, how
can a huge company such as Bank of America run without some sort of grand design?
But what about smaller companies (under 500 employees), which account for about half of
private-sector employment and two-thirds of net new jobs in recent years?11 One analysis of
several studies found that strategic planning was appropriate not just for large firmsindeed,
companies with fewer than 100 employees could benefit as well, although the improvement in
financial performance was small. Nevertheless, the researchers concluded, it may be that the
small improvement in performance is not worth the effort involved in strategic planning unless a
firm is in a very competitive industry where small differences in performance may affect the
firm’s survival potential.12 ?
EXAMPLE
Comparing Strategies: Big-Company Make the Consumer a Captive versus Small-Firm Offer
Personal Connections
Big companiesespecially big-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, or Appleare no
longer content simply to enhance part of your life, says one report. The new strategy is to build
a device, sell it to consumers, and then sell them the content to play on it. And maybe some ads
too.13
Big-Company Ways. That is, the idea is to get consumers tied not just to a brand or device or
platform but to make them captive of the company’s ecosystemand to get them connected as
tightly as possible so they and their content are locked into one system, says analyst Michael
Gartenberg.14 Thus, Amazon, for example, sells the Kindle e-book readers at a low price so that
it can then sell e-books. Amazon is in a race to embed itself into the fabric of world-wide
commerce in a way that would make it indispensable to everyone’s shopping habits, says one
columnist, and to do so before its rivals wise up.15 Similarly, Apple enables users to easily
create book content on its iBook Authors book-creation tool, but authors will only be able to sell
the results through Apple. Google attempted to promote its Google Nexus smartphone as a
platform for selling Google Wallet, a cell-phone payment system.
Small-Company Ways. I don’t feel they behave in a way that I want to support with my
consumer dollars, says Chicago professor Harold Pollack about big Internet retailers like
Amazon.16 So instead, Pollack started buying from small online retailers. Their prices are often
higher, but he says he now has a clear conscience.
Whereas the strategy of big e-commerce companies is to try to tightly connect consumers with
discounted prices, free shipping, and easy-to-use apps, the strategy of small retailerslike Hello
Hello Books in Maineis to discourage price comparisons (as in creating buy it where you try
it campaigns or refusing to carry popular items carried by big retailers), offer freebies, and
attempt to establish a personal or emotional connection with customers. They also try to exploit
the sympathies of shoppers to support the little guy, as Pollack is doing.
YOUR CALL
Considering the proliferation of price comparison sites (Pricegrabber.com, Bizrate.com,
FreePriceAlerts.com) that will usually direct consumers to big e-commerce retailers, do you
think low prices will always win in the end? Is there any strategy a small retailer can take to
maintain an advantage?17
Page 162
6.2 The Strategic-Management Process
MAJOR QUESTION
What’s the five-step recipe for the strategic-management process?
THE BIG PICTURE
The strategic-management process has five steps: Establish the mission and the vision. Assess
the current reality. Formulate the grand strategy. Implement the strategy. Maintain strategic
control. All the steps may be affected by feedback that enables the taking of constructive action.
When is a good time to begin the strategic-management process? Often it’s touched off by some
crisis.
Back before General Motors recalled 25.69 million vehicles (in the first six months of 2014
alone) with defective ignition switches, Toyota went through its own recall crisis. In 2009 and
2010 the Japanese automaker encountered severe quality problems involving what seemed to be
uncontrollable acceleration in its automobiles. Toyota Motor’s President Akio Toyoda concluded
that these problems were partly due to the company’s excessive focus on market share and
profits, requiring that the company reorient its strategy toward quality and innovation.18 For
Edward Lampert, who in 2005 merged Kmart and Sears into megaretailer Sears Holdings, the
pressure was felt in years of underperforming returns despite cost cutting and store closures.19
EXAMPLE
Crisis Leading to the Strategic-Management Process: Starbucks Reclaims Its Soul
Among the many things that Starbucks has going for it is this: it survived a near-death
experience.20
Today’s CEO, Howard Schultz, joined the Seattle-based company as marketing director in 1982,
when it was only a small chain selling coffee equipment. Over nearly two decades, he gained
control and, inspired by the coffee houses of Europe, transformed the company into a
comfortable third place between home and work, a place with a neighborhood feel selling
fresh-brewed by-the-cup lattes and cappuccinos. By 2000, Starbucks (named for the first mate of
the whaling ship in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick) had become the world’s largest specialty
coffee retailer, with 3,501 stores, 78% of them in the United States.21
Starbucks became, for many of us, what we talk about when we talk about coffee, wrote one
reporter. It changed how we drink it (on a sofa, with Wi-Fi, or on the subway), how we order it
(for here, grande, two-pump vanilla, skinny extra hot latte), and what we are willing to pay for
it, such as $4.99 for a Frappuccino.22
Schultz Steps Down. Schultz stepped down as CEO in 2000 (remaining as chairman), and for a
while the business continued to thrive. Then two things happened that provoked a crisis. First,
the company lost a certain soul, says Schultz, as the management became more concerned with
profits than store atmosphere and company values and extended existing product lines rather
than creating new ones. Second, as the Great Recession took hold in 2007, tight-fisted consumers
abandoned specialty coffees, causing the stock price to nosedive. In January 2008, after an eightyear absence, Schultz returned as CEO.
The Reinvention Begins. I didn’t come back to save the companyI hate that description,
Schultz told an interviewer. I came back to rekindle the emotion that built it.23
Among the risks he took to restore the company’s luster, he closed 800 U.S. stores, laid off 4,000
employees, and let go most top executives. As a morale booster, he flew 10,000 store managers
to New Orleans, recently destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Along with attending strategy
sessions, they bonded in community-service activities, contributing thousands of volunteer hours
to helping to restore parts of the city. We wanted to give back to that community post-Katrina,
says Schultz, and remind and rekindle the organization with the values and guiding principles of
our company before we did a stitch of business. Later he closed all U.S. stores for half a day so
baristas could be retrained in how to make espresso.
The Payoff. After a couple of years, the company turned around, the result of better operations,
modernized technology, a reinvigorated staff, and innovations such as Via premium instant
coffee. (Since then it has acquired its own Costa Rican farm to develop proprietary coffee
varieties; teamed with Oprah Winfrey to introduce Oprah Chai tea; acquired the La Boulange
bakery chain; enabled customers to pay for coffee via a mobile-payment app; and even launched
alcohol sales.)24 In mid-2014, it was serving more than 70 million customers face to face, in
20,200 stores in 64 countries, and its stock price was nine times what it had been in 2008.25
Starbucks in China. This coffee cafe is located in Chengdu in Sichuan province.
Page 163
Schultz feels strongly that there’s an opportunity for businesses to demonstrate a role in society
that’s beyond profitability, providing health insurance even for temps, creating tuition
reimbursement, helping to raise loans for small businesses.
YOUR CALL
Some critics feel Starbucks is the symbol of affordable luxury. If we can’t afford a McMansion
or a Lexus, says one observer, we may be willing to make that $5 splurge at Starbucks simply
because it makes us feel a bit better about ourselves.26 Thus, despite the innovation in products,
attempts to rekindle the cozy neighborhood café, and emphasis on positive social values, do you
think another economic downturn could alter Starbucks’s fortunes?
The Five Steps of the Strategic-Management Process
The strategic-management process has five steps, plus a feedback loop, as shown below. (See
Figure 6.1.) Let’s consider these five steps.
FIGURE 6.1
FIGURE 6.1 The strategic-management processThe process has five …
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