Competitive Strategy Assignment: Application of StrategicDevelopmentto Contemporary Business Cases

Question

Task: The questions to be answered in this competitive strategy assignment are:
Question 1- Which elements of the General Environment are significant to the future of the German luxury car industry?
Question 2- Discuss how David Jones effectively build relationships with customers.
Question 3- Identify and discuss the 2 major environmental trends Walmart need to consider when entering the China market.
Question 4- What are the major competitive issues General Electric faces when managing cooperative strategies?
Question 5- Starbucks made important acquisitions in the past two decades what would be the 5 (five) most common challenges of a successful acquisition?
Question 6- Identify what you believe are the 5 (five) most important leadership responsibilities and how today’s business leader like Jack Ma develop the skills and charisma to be effective in the role?

Answer

Answer to Question 1 of competitive strategy assignment
Within the German luxury car industry, the competition between the organisations like, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, etc. is at high level. Thus, the leaders of this brand always pursue and implement its most successful competitive strategies within its business to compete with its potent rivalries. Most of the young generation of Germany likes to purchase on luxury car brands with a low cost amount. Henceforth, the organisations have started to provide their highly advanced products with a low cost to its consumers (Kangeret al., 2019). In this way, Audi launches its new model of A3 Sedan, which is lower in price than the other luxurious models. Thus, to compete with them, BMW has launched its model of 3 series (the 320) through developing its existing manufacturing process to reduce its cost of its products.

In the era of digitalisation, most of the people like to make purchase on electric vehicle, which is prominently suitable for the entire consumer community due to its low cost of amount. Also, due to the utilisation of electric vehicle, people can reduce their purchasing amount, which they purchase on their existing petrol or diesel model (Mazzocato, 2019). Thus, the provision of the advance technological service to manufacture electric vehicle model creates the potential future of the German luxury car industry.

Answer to Question 2
In the Australian market, David Jones is the leading retailer brand within the competitive market of Australia. Mostly, this organisation provides most attractive, designed and fashionable products to satisfy its consumers during its organisational operation. Within the South African market, the organisation has created its potent market value through inspiring its consumer community of South Africa through providing its significant and premium quality products (Vlachos et al., 2017). In this way, the organisation has got the success to achieve A$2.1 billion within a one financial year. In this, A$400 million is included that it has earned only from the Australian market within a one financial year. Its vast range of consumer base throughout the domestic and international market helps to grow the organisational operation through providing their valuable concentration within their business.

The CEO of this organisation always focuses to build most effective relationship with its potent consumers, who are greatly involved within their organisational operation.Therefore, the leader of David Jones always provides advance communication service to get the appropriate knowledge about the likes and dislikes of the consumers. Moreover, the organisation always provides its product with low cost, due to which, the consumers get prominent satisfaction from the organisation (Shin et al., 2017). Also, the organisation provides predominant service to reach its products to its consumers. Thus, the organisation has been succeeded to form the significant relationship with its consumers.

Answer to Question 3
Walmart is the leading retailer brand in the market of USA, which prominently operates its business both in the domestic market and in the international market.During its organisational operation the organisation has enhanced its profitability more than $30 trillion by selling its vast amount of goods and services throughout the world. Within this profitability, the organisational investment is only $1 trillion.

Now-a-days, Walmart hold around 400 million consumers throughout the world by providing good quality products to its consumers (Xie and Cooke, 2019). Thus, the organisation has planned to open its stores in the Chinese market to get more profits during its worldwide operation. However, in the Chinese market, Walmart has faced with numerous issues due to the misunderstanding of Chinese culture, and also due to the misconduct of political leader of China.

Walmart has opened its first store in Shenzhen in 1996, where in its initial stage the organisation has greatly suffered due to the misunderstanding of Chinese culture. Then the organisation thought to sell its product in 117 cities and 25 provinces through appropriately understanding the Chinese culture and the needs and like-dislikes of Chinese people (Ozkan, 2020).On the other hand, also, Walmart did not get the support from the local and national political leaders to fluently operate its business in the Chinese market. Even, the Chinese government has forced the organisation to close its business due to violating the trade rules and regulations of China.

Answer to Question 4
General Electric is the large organisation, which generally compete with 16 different industries during its organisational operation. However, due to its efficient business operation, the organisation has been succeeded to achieve an extensive stock value of 5.8% since 119 year of its organisational operation. Even, due to its most potential business operation General Electric has ranked in 8th position due to its largest operation in Fortune 500. Thus, the organisation has formed an effective brand image in the world. To enhance its market base, and to provide more specific product and service to satisfy its consumers, the organisation has divided its department within four divisions (Xuet al., 2018). These four divisions are GE Capital, GE Home & Business Solutions, GE Energy and GE Technology Infrastructure. These four department of this organisation helps to prominently compete with it rivalry of 16 different industry in the compete market.

However, General Electric has experienced the ‘bump in the road’, due to its poor management process of wide diversified business.Generally, the organisation has been criticised due to lose its control over the largest media channel of USA. Thus, NBC, the largest television network of USA provides the restrictions to the organisation by its reporters. Therefore, in the first decade of 21st century, General Electric has got the reduction of its stock value in the market as the negative outcome of its hampering historical background (Heath and Thompson, 2018).

Answer to Question 5
Starbuck is the most dominating coffee brand in the competitive market of USA, which provides its premium quality products and services to its consumers with maintaining the fare prices in its domestic market. Through noting its existing potent business, the organisation has planned to open its 15000 stores throughout the world within the year of 2015, and during its worldwide operation, it has already opened its 12000 stores within the end of 2012. Including its plan, Starbucks has opened its 700 stores in the Chinese market within 2012. Thus, due to its efficient business operation, the organisation has enhanced its profits by 75% with the amount of US$886,000 within the end of 2012 (Chang, 2020). However, during the entry of Starbucks in the Australian market, the organisation has faced with numerous fundamental problems due to the existence of dominating competitors in the market. In its initial stage due to importing of raw coffee beans the organisation has charged a high amount due to its coffee products, where the existing brands provides their service within a low price to its consumers. Moreover, Starbucks has opened its stores in the low traffic area in the Australian market, due to which, it is unable to get potent consumer base to make high profit margin. Also, whereas, the Melbourne style coffee is more famous and the price is much lesser than Starbucks; therefore, the organisation gets the hamper during its business (Schneper, 2020). On the other hand, in the European market, the consumer community likes to get the product within a low price manner, and due to the increasing rate of Starbucks coffee, the organisation gets the negative impact on its business. Starbucks has faced more problems during its business operation in the Indian market. Because of the people mostly prefer tea more than coffee in India; thus, the organisational performance has poor due to the transformation of consumer needs.

Answer to Question 6
The founder of Alibaba group is J. Ma, which is the most successful leader of this group, due to which; the organisation efficiently operates its e-commerce business in the Chinese market.The company received US$ 1.7 billion in China during the year 2010 over the process of successful leadership development. It also acquired approximately US$60 million during the same year from global sales. In addition, the AlibabaGroup was compensated by about 2300 vendors to provide their services and products to its customers.In this way, during J. Ma's successful leadership control, the organisation conducts its business operation notably (Alvesson, 2020). Thus, the executives should be more influential and effective in controlling their organisation's overall operation to preserve its corporate business successfully in the global market. Therefore, to improve governance productivity and performance, and become more able to handle corporate tasks, leaders must therefore reflect on five core critical roles. Thus, the executives would be more effective, responsive and successive with their organization.

Confidence in the ruler and in the internal members must be formed by the rulers. Via this, leaders will execute their roles comfortably to increase the internal efficiency of the sector. Moreover, the administrative has to build the significant relation with its consumers to enhance the value of the organisation. Also, the executives have to provide efficient communication service to its consumers and its organisational stakeholders to sustain the stakeholder engagement within the organisational growth. On the other hand, the executives need to build the potent confidence and efficacy within the minds of its employees to make them able to take heavy risks and to deal with any situation (Alam and Ahmad, 2017). Additionally, also the administrative has to provide more efficient guidance and trainings to its employee to enhance their productivity for the organisational growth. At the end, the leader has to provide the flexibility to its employees within their job performance to enhance the motivational level within the mind of the employees.

References
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Alvesson, M., 2020. Upbeat leadership: A recipe for–or against–“successful” leadership studies. The Leadership Quarterly, p.101439.

Chang, J., 2020. Completion Factors of Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions of Chinese Enterprises (Doctoral dissertation, Benedictine University).
Heath, T.R. and Thompson, W.R., 2018. Avoiding US-China competition is futile: Why the best option is to manage strategic rivalry. asia policy, 25(2), pp.91-119.

Kanger, L., Geels, F.W., Sovacool, B. and Schot, J., 2019. Technological diffusion as a process of societal embedding: Lessons from historical automobile transitions for future electric mobility. Competitive strategy assignmentTransportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 71, pp.47-66.
Mazzocato, A., 2019. The Rising E-Car industry, And the Influence of Car Sharing in the German Market (Bachelor's thesis, UniversitàCa'FoscariVenezia).
Ozkan, K.S., 2020. International market exit by firms: Misalignment of strategy with the foreign market risk environment. International Business Review, p.101741.

Schneper, W.D., 2020. Common thread: The Fifth Discipline from a liberal arts college perspective. The Learning Organization.
Shin, H., Ellinger, A.E., Mothersbaugh, D.L. and Reynolds, K.E., 2017.Employing proactive interaction for service failure prevention to improve customer service experiences. Journal of Service Theory and Practice. Vlachos, P.A., Swaen, V., Antonetti, P., Jones, D.A., Jones, D.A., Willness, C.R., Glavas, A. and Meets, R.C., 2017. David A. Jones1*, Chelsea R. Willness2 and Ante Glavas3. Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Psychology: Quid pro Quo, p.5.

Xie, Y. and Cooke, F.L., 2019. Quality and cost?The evolution of Walmart's business strategy and human resource policies and practices in China and their impact (1996–2017). Human Resource Management, 58(5), pp.521-541.

Xu, H., Hipel, K.W., Kilgour, D.M. and Fang, L., 2018. Conflict resolution using the graph model: Strategic interactions in competition and cooperation. Cham: Springer International Publishing.