Competitive strategy analysis | Management homework help

The coursework requires you to create a 10 to 15-minutes video in length and a reflective document summarising the competitive strategy lessons you or the group has learnt from undertaking it. You will be marked on the content of your video and reflective document, as well as your ability to present the evidence effectively and in a coherent manner.

The coursework is due on 27 October 2021 before 12pm (UK), 3pm (Dubai) and 7pm (Malaysia).

• You can complete this coursework either as an individual or within a group.
• Groups are self-selected and will be no larger than four people. You can self-select groups by using the people menu within Canvas.
• Students entering the course after the 1st of October will automatically complete the coursework as an individual.
• If you are working in a group, just one group member needs to upload the video assignment and the reflective document onto Microsoft Stream and Canvas platform respectively.

The following companies and their associated product lines/ranges will be the focus of your coursework, so please select one.

Dubai

• Shiseido and the Dubai market for cosmetics
• Huawei P40 Pro in the Dubai market for smartphones
• Apple’s iPhone 12 and the Dubai smartphone market
• Lamborghini range and the Dubai market for luxury cars
• Volkswagen Tiguan and Dubai market for C-segment or family SUV vehicles
• Al Maya and Dubai market for retail groceries
• NEXT and the Dubai market for men’s clothing
• Kashkha and the Dubai market for women’s clothing
• Du and the Dubai market for mobile phone network providers

Please note that you are free to change the company and market focus for the above listed companies. However, please email John Sanders or your campus course leader if you want to choose another company and product line/range outside those listed. The reason for obtaining clearance is to make sure that your company possesses sufficient information to put together a viable piece of coursework.

Coursework Requirements

Please follow the steps outlined below to make sure your video contains the correct information for examining the challenges and strategic options confronting your selected company and its product line or range. 

1. Place group member names and matriculation numbers on a title slide at the beginning of your video.
2. Just provide very brief background information about the company and a description of its product line or range that is being investigated.
3. Determine the competitive stance for the product line or range you are investigating. Please provide a rationale for your choice of competitive stance(s) based upon evidence gathered from industry sources, quotes, video clips from the company or YouTube etc.
4. Employ PESTEL Analysis to determine country-specific and world-wide trends affecting your company and its product line/range. You won’t be able to mention everything, so identify and prioritise the trends you think are going to be the most important/challenging in the short to medium term (i.e. within the next 1 to 5 years). This analysis will help the group to determine the market conditions confronting the company. Make sure you take into account the affects the trends will have on the company’s competitive stance for the particular product line or range being investigated, i.e. pricing, costs, suppliers etc. There is no need to tell the viewer the purpose of PESTEL Analysis, take it for read he or she knows this already.
5. Prepare two strategic group maps. Ideally, the first map should employ product quality and pricing policy to identify your company’s position within the marketplace. These two axes have been selected, because they mirror what most people perceive (strategy scholars in particular) to be the primary dimensions of how companies compete against their rivals. This map should identify your company’s main competitors as well. This mapping exercise will clarify whether there is a match between the company’s desired competitive stance for its product or range and its actual position in the minds of others like customers.

Please state in the video why this is a favourable or unfavourable comparison for the company’s product or range being investigated. For example, if it is an unfavourable match, this would suggest that the company needs to take further actions to either strengthen its position (increase or change its advertising, introduce quality improvements, increase R&D expenditure etc) or maybe drastically change competitive stance.

The second map should employ other variables for its axis to determine other differences or similarities between your company and its rivals. Like the first map, you should discuss what the map reveals about your company’s product or ranges compared to the competition. It may provide clues for further actions that need to be undertaken by the company going forward.  For both maps, please inform the marker within the video the source of the data used for each axis, if possible, rather than employing your own subjective opinion.

1. Determine the competitive conditions confronting your company’s product or range by performing a Porter’s Five forces for the particular market being investigated. Please make sure you that in the main you are examining the local market context, however, often the factors affecting each force are determined internationally rather than locally, so let the marker know if this is the case. Please for this analysis just present your key findings, don’t discuss everything you discover! Just what you think are the most important factors affecting each force in detail. This also means it is okay to ignore the forces you don’t think are significant and just describe the ones that you do. However, please state briefly in the video why you have ignored any forces.
2. From the above PESTEL Analysis, Strategic Group Mapping and 5 Forces Analysis you should now assess whether the company should grow, retrench, or consolidate the company’s product line or range investigated. Explain the reasoning behind your choices based on the analysis performed. If you select growth, which most of you will do, it can be approached from four different perspectives as described by Ansoff’s Growth Matrix.
3. According to Ansoff’s Growth Matrix, company growth can be achieved by using four tactics. These tactics are market penetration, market development, product development and diversification. Your task is to determine which one of these tactics, or combination, should be employed by the company. Further information about market penetration, market development, product development and diversification can be read on pages 238 to 242 and 256 to 258 of Whittington, R. Regnér, P., Angwin, D., Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (2020). Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases,(12th ed.), Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited (i.e., the required textbook).
4. According to your findings explain whether the current competitive stance of your company’s product or range should be changed, maintained, or abandoned all together? Please note that it takes many years to establish a company’s reputation and build the necessary resources and competences to compete in a particular way, so a competitive stance should not be abandoned lightly.
5. To complement the video, you should construct a 300-word reflective summary document discussing the competitive strategy lessons you or the group collectively learnt from analysing a company’s product line or product range for a particular market. For example, the content of the reflective summary might explain how the video assignment improved your own or the group’s understanding of the subject area in general and/or the employment of analytical techniques particularly. The individual or group can also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of how the coursework was planned and implemented – what would the individual or group do better in the future. It might also discuss how easy or challenging it was working in a group if this was how the coursework was completed.
6. The reflective document should include your name and ID or in the case of a group the names of all those involved and their IDs.
7. You should paste the shared video link obtained from Microsoft Stream to your reflective document as well.
8. You should also place a list of any references used in the video at the end of the reflective document rather than within the video.
9. Finally, please upload your reflective document to Canvas.

Further details about creating and submitting your video and reflective document will be discussed in the course online live learning sessions.

Remember your coursework should be uploaded to Canvas and Microsoft Stream on the 27 October 2021 before 12pm (UK), 3pm (Dubai) and 7pm (Malaysia).