Strategic Options and Opportunities
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Research the current strategic options and opportunities for one of the following companies: Lowes, Honda, GEICO, McDonalds, Nike, FedEx, Amazon, Proctor & Gamble, or Disney. Write a 3-5 page
paper in which you do the following:
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Identify the company’s principal competitors and describe the kind of competition they currently present (traditional, potential, and oblique).
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Generate at least three strategic options for the firm you have chosen.
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With your strategic options defined, suggest at least three specific criteria to evaluate these options. Provide a rationale for each of the criteria.
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Choose the best strategic option based on your evaluation criteria. (If your criteria require quantitative considerations, it is only necessary to make rough estimates. You do not need to make a detailed quantitative analysis.)
Your assignment should adhere to these guidelines:
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Write in a logical, well-organized, conventional business style. Use Times New Roman font size 12 or similar, double-space, and leave ample white space per page.
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On the first page or in a header, include the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. Reference pages are not included in the assignment page length.
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Faculty has discretion to penalize for assignments diverting from assignment guidelines. Check with your individual professor if you feel the assignment requires a much longer or shorter treatment than recommended.
Grading Requirements
Please note, this assignment’s rubric works a little differently than most in the class. This assignment asks that you identify at least three strategic options. If you identify exactly three strategic options, this will result in a grade of Pass. Only when you provide more than three is an honors grade possible. It also asks that you evaluate each and every option against at least three criteria. If you identify exactly three criteria, this will result in a grade of Pass. Only when you provide more than three criteria, and only when you evaluate each of your strategic options against these four or greater criteria, will you be eligible for an Honors grade. Do not forget to still describe your key competition and what kind of competition they present (hint, every business that exists has competition). Do not forget to still also choose a strategic option based on your evaluation as well.
Assignment Description
This paper presents the opportunity to choose criteria to evaluate strategic options and the chosen criteria could be as diverse as your experiences. Please read the rubric, Honors level work will require presenting more than three strategic options! Honors level work will require more than three criteria!
Almost universally, in the Week 5 discussion each of you comment on specific evaluative criteria to assess strategy based on how well the organization could support the potential strategy, how adequately the environment would respond to the strategy , and how well the strategy fit within the environment’s preparedness for it. In other words, Is it Us, is it Big, is it Time, and more.
Do those criteria not seem useful for evaluating the potential strategy options as discussed in your papers? If not, why not?
Some students include various analyses in this assignment. That is not necessary. An analysis is great and it can also provide specific evaluative criteria. But the key to the issue of choosing an option consists of recognizing the criteria in the analysis and then using the CRITERIA, not the whole analysis, to evaluate the option.
For example, were one to consider a PESTEL analysis one would find Political climate as one criteria. Thus a strategic option to expand into one country could be disastrous whereas expanding into a different country would be great. In this example, the OPTIONS could consist of a market expansion into a several different countries. And one CRITERIA consists of political climate. This very brief example lacks a full discussion and expansion but I am trying to make a point. For instance, were one to use SWOT, one might have recognized that Opportunity provided a criteria. One potential strategy might result in greater future Opportunity than another option(s).
And nothing prevents one from using Political, Opportunity, and other Criteria as long as each criteria is applied to each of the options. Point being, the same criteria must evaluate each different option or the evaluation lacks consistency and a supporting rationale.
