Competitive Strategy Assignment Illustrating Strategic Development of 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
Most of the young generation in Germany like to purchase a luxury brand of cars to fulfil their needs. In this aspect, Mercedes (Mercedes-Benz), Audi, BMW, etc. has grabbed the potential market throughout its efficient operation. Moreover, the consumer community of Germany prefers to luxury brands; therefore, the luxury car industry of Germany has decided to provide the most luxurious cars to its consumers. This helps to satisfy the consumers and also helps to expand the industrial business operation across the country (Mazzocato, 2019). Also, the Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co., and the Toyota Motor Co. have enhanced its massive market value during its prominent business operation. These are also involved in the luxury car industry, which provides its products in the market within the lower cost that helps to engage more consumer concentration within its business operation.

However, due to the efficient business operation of Honda Motor Co., Toyota Motor Co., and Ford Motor Co. the other luxury car brands like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, etc. get bounce during their operation due to the competitive environment. Henceforth, to sustain the market value through competing with the rivalries, the luxury car companies have fetched an innovation within their business (Popp, 2019). Audi started to provide its A3 and A4 Sedan, a low-cost version of its models to satisfy the consumers through selling the luxury model within a low cost. Also, on the other hand, BMW has improved its 3-series models of Sedan (the 320) that potentially helps to reduce its expensive manner of purchasing. Moreover, to maintain the effectiveness in the German market, Mercedes also started to offer their model of CLA (a four-cylinder car) within a low range of amount. In this way, the competitive environment in the German car industry helps to provide the more effective and attractive product within a low cost, which potentially satisfies and helps the consumer community of Germany to make the purchase for luxury car models (Popp, 2019).

Answer to Question 2 (Week 4)
Within the Australian competitive market, David Jones is the leading retailer brand that efficiently operates its business throughout the world. Also, in the South African market, the company is the leading clothing brand that sells its products by amount of A$2.1 billion throughout the year of 2014. During its business operation generally, its potent consumer base helps the company in its company operational growth. Fundamentally, David Jones always pursues its existing business strategies, due to which the company has been a success to grab a potential consumer base throughout its company operation. In 2015 Iain Nairn became as the CEO of David Jones by J. Dixon, a veteran of British retailer (Shin et al., 2017). After becoming the CEO, Nairn has decided to fetch some innovation due to sustaining its business effectiveness both in the domestic and in the international market. The presence of its mass competitors like, Sainsbury, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, etc. in the international market, the company decided to provides its product to its consumer within less cost than the fair cost of the product. This helps to engage the potent base of consumer community within its business operation in its initial stage of business in the international platform.

In one hand, the company always like to do CSR activity during its business operation, which helps to enhance the effectiveness of its brand image in front of its consumers (Jones et al., 2019). On the other hand, the low-cost product and the efficient services help to build an effective relationship between the company and the consumers. Also, the trust for products and commitment deliverance helps to foster a stronger bonding of the company with its consumers. Thus, the company can achieve its formed business goals by keeping the vast consumer base within its business operation. In addition, the trusts, and effective relationship with the consumers, help to sustain its companyal business in the international competitive market.

Answer to Question 3 (Week 8)
China is the most significant market for business for any company, and therefore, most of the multinational companies want to operate their business in the Chinese market with satisfying the consumer community of China. However, the government of China provides different kinds of rules few for their domestic companies and few for the international company that needs to operate its business in the Chinese market. In this aspect, Walmart, the leading retailer brand of USA, also needs to expand its business in the market of China (Tan et al., 2018). However, after the implementation of its business, the company has faced numerous challenges during its operation in the initial stage of its business. The Chinese political leaders and the tradition or culture of Chinese people has a vast difference than the other countries; thus, Walmart gets the competitive challenges in its initial stage of business due to the misunderstanding of Chinese culture.

During the on-going trend of Chinese culture, due to the misunderstanding of its culture, Walmart suffered extremely to appropriately understand the Chinese culture. Whereas, the culture of China widely differs from the USA; therefore, the company strived to discover the appropriate product and services that the consumer community of 117 cities and 25 provinces in China needs to accomplish their needs. Moreover, the business of the USA Company Walmart gets in troubled due to the poor relationship with the national and local politicians of China (Schleifer and Sun, 2018). For instance, the Chinese administration has fined the company to overruling the local and national trade rules and regulations. Even, the government has forced Walmart to intercept all its stores in the Chinese market to exaggerated product differentiations. In this way, Walmart gets numerous losses during its business operation in China, and the company learnt a lesson that “China is big, but it is hard”.

Answer to Question 4 (Week 9)
General Electric is a large corporation in the world, which efficiently does its business by providing efficient products and service to its consumers by satisfying them. To more expand it's business and to more effectively with its rivalries, the company operates its business with four divisions of its stores like GE Energy, GE Technological Infrastructure, GE Capital and GE Home and Business solutions. These are the specific department for each solution that massively helps the company to compete with its 16 rivalries in the worldwide market. Since the 119 years of its companyal business operation throughout the world, General Electric has been able to achieve its stock value of 58% average per annum. Due to the enhancement of its business, the company was ranked as the 8th largest corporation by Fortune 500 in the year 2015 (Malik, 2019). Throughout getting the support of USA President Barack Obama, the company has been able to more potentially operate its business in the international market through enhancing its stock value in the industry.

Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, efficiently manages its entire companyal activity through pursuing the most effective leadership and business management strategy. However, due to some lacking in the management system, during the first decade of the 21st century, General Electric gets bounced back within its holding stock value due to its poor environmental record. Actually, the company has been criticised due to its control of media services like NBC, the vast media channel of the USA. Even, the company has restricted and warned by the NBC reporters and criticised due to its poor environmental record in its previous times of business (O'Connor, Yang and Jiang, 2018). However, due to the efficient management of J. Immelt, the company has got numerous profits in between the year of 2014 and 2015 through selling its portfolio property by US$17 billion.

Answer to Question 5 (Week 7)
Starbucks is the leading brand of coffee in the USA, which efficiently provides its service throughout the world with the premium quality of the coffee. The company has aimed to open its 15000 stores within the year of 2015, to meet with the aim; the company had already opened over 11000 stores in the world within the year of 2012. Also, the company had opened around 700 stores within 2012, in China, where Starbucks aims to open its 1500 stores within the year of 2015 (Chang, 2020). In this way, the company has earned a sum of US$886,000 at the end of the year 2012 throughout its efficient operation in the Chinese market, which enhanced by 75% from the earning of the year 2008. In this way, the organisation proficiently provides its service in the international platform, due to which, it achieves the leading brand image for coffee in the global platform.

However, Starbucks gets external challenges during their business implementation in the Australian market. In the year of 2000, the organisation has extremely strived to appropriately enter the Australian market through competing with the existing Australian coffee brand.Firstly, Starbucks opened its stores in the low-traffic area of the Australian market, due to which, the organisation get a low amount of consumer concentration within their business operation. Secondly, the existing companies of Melbourne have potentially grabbed the vast range of market by providing an efficient and attractive cup of coffee to its consumers. Therefore, Starbuck gets the threats in the initial stage of its business due to the existing coffee brand in the Australian market (Bolton et al., 2018).Thirdly, Melbourne-style coffee is the world’s best coffee product due to its marvellous tastes and low cost of expenses. Where, Starbucks also provides its products within a very decorative and attractive manner to its consumers, but it charges a little bit of high cost than the Melbourne-style coffee brands.Fourthly, the consumer community of South-Asian zone mostly like to drinks tea more than coffee. Therefore, in this case, Starbucks has got external threats due to the different kinds of needs of South-Asian society (Enderwick, 2020).Fifthly, within the European market, the organisation cannot potentially expand its business operation due to the existence of European coffee brands. The European consumers mostly like to taste the coffee of their domestic brands, and hence, the organisation gets the losses during its worldwide operation in the competitive market.

Answer to Question 6 (Week 11)
J. Ma is the founder of the Alibaba group, which successfully operates its e-commerce business in China. Throughout its efficient leadership management, the organisation has earned US$1.7 billion in the year of 2010 in China. Also, it has earned through global sales of around US$60 million in the same year. Moreover, around 2300, sellers paid the Alibaba group to sell their services and goods to its consumers. In this way, the organisation prominently operates its business throughout the efficient leadership management of J. Ma, the CEO of Alibaba. However, due to the enhancement of the competitive environment in the e-commerce business, the leaders must be more potent and efficient to manage the entire activity of its organisation to sustain its organisational business in the competitive market (Kiarie, Maru and Cheruiyot, 2017). Henceforth, to develop the leadership skills and efficiency, and to be more responsible about to manage the organisational activities, now the leaders have to focus on five most significant responsibilities. Through which, the leaders will be more successful, responsible and efficient for their business.

Firstly, the leaders have to form the trust between the leader and the organisational stakeholders. Through which, the leaders can confidently perform their duties to enhance the organisational operation in the market.Additionally, the leaders also have to build potent bonding with its consumers to engage their involvement with the organisational operation (Wolf, 2015). Secondly,the appropriate communication system provides the benefits to directly get in touch with the organisational activities and with its stakeholders. In this way, the leader could get efficient knowledge about the stakeholder's thinking regarding their performance, and the leader could perform its duties by comparing the needs of stakeholders.Thirdly,the leaders need to form the self-confidence and self-efficacy within the minds of its employees to take the right decision in any situation and to take a load of heavy risk during its job practices.Fourthly, due to operating the business in the competitive market, the leaders need to provide efficient training and guidance to make them more efficient and confident. Through which, the employees will easily be jumbled with the external situation that helps to deal with it (Wolf, 2015).Fifthly, the leaders of the organisation must need to set the appropriate working schedule for their employee performance. In this way, the employees will get flexibility during their job performance to balance their personal life properly. This helps to enhance the workability of the employees.

References
Bolton, R.N., McColl-Kennedy, J.R., Cheung, L., Gallan, A., Orsingher, C., Witell, L. and Zaki, M., 2018. Customer experience challenges: bringing together digital, physical and social realms. Journal of Service Management.

Chang, J., 2020. Completion Factors of Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions of Chinese Enterprises (Doctoral dissertation, Benedictine University).

Enderwick, P., 2020. The Competitive Challenge of Emerging Markets: China and India. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Jones, D.A., Newman, A., Shao, R. and Cooke, F.L., 2019. Advances in employee-focused micro-level research on corporate social responsibility: Situating new contributions within the current state of the literature. Journal of Business Ethics, 157(2), pp.293-302.

Kiarie, M.A.W., Maru, LC and Cheruiyot, TK, 2017. Leader personality traits and employee job satisfaction in the media sector, Kenya. The TQM Journal.

Malik, A., 2019. Creating competitive advantage through source basic capital strategic humanity in the industrial age 4.0. International Research Journal of Advanced Engineering and Science, 4(1), pp.209-215.

Mazzocato, A., 2019. The Rising E-Car industry, And the Influence of Car Sharing in the German Market (Bachelor's thesis, UniversitàCa'FoscariVenezia).

O'Connor, N.G., Yang, Z. and Jiang, L., 2018. Challenges in gaining supply chain competitiveness: Supplier response strategies and determinants. Industrial Marketing Management, 72, pp.138-151. Popp, D., 2019. Environmental policy and innovation: a decade of research (No. w25631).Competitive strategy assignment National Bureau of Economic Research.

Schleifer, P. and Sun, Y., 2018. Emerging markets and private governance: the political economy of sustainable palm oil in China and India. Review of International Political Economy, 25(2), pp.190-214.

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.
Tan, B., Yan, J., Chen, S. and Liu, X., 2018, December. The impact of blockchain on food supply chain: the case of Walmart. In International Conference on Smart Blockchain (pp. 167-177). Springer, Cham.
Wolf, J. 2015. 6 Essential Leadership Responsibilities that Build Effective Teams. [online]. TLNT. Available at: https://www.tlnt.com/6-essential-leadership-responsibilities-that-build-effective-teams/. [Accessed on: 03.10.2020].