Components of the Generic Strategy Section
Components of the Generic Strategy section include the following:
- State the generic strategy (differentiation, cost leadership, focused differentiation or focused cost leadership) that your company follows and explain your assertion
- How does your company's strategy compare to competitors?
- In what direction is your company moving? - What is driving your company's direction?
- What should the company be doing regarding its strategic direction?
Where do I look?
- IBISWorldIBISWorld provides industry research reports and profiles for over 700 United States industries as well as a wide range of industries in China. Business reports for five categories: industry market research, industry risk ratings, company research, global industry research, and economic and demographic data. Each report provides key statistics, market characteristics and segmentation, industry conditions, leading competitors, industry performance analysis and future outlook.
- Mintel AcademicOffers yearly market research reports covering UK, Europe, US and International consumer markets for products, markets and demographics. Analysis includes market sizes and forecasts, market trends, market segmentation, competitive context, broken down segment performances, retail channels, consumer demographics and survey results, leading companies, brand share, marketing strategies, and more.
- Business Source CompleteBusiness Source Complete provides full text for scholarly business journals and other sources, including full text for more than 1,800 peer-reviewed business publications. Coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business. This database provides full text (PDF) for top scholarly journals, including the Harvard Business Review. It also includes industry and country reports from Euromonitor and company and industry reports from Datamonitor.
- ABI/InformABI/Inform, an extensive international business and management database, contains bibliographic citations, abstracts, and full text of articles appearing in professional publications, academic journals, and trade magazines published worldwide. ABI/Inform covers the areas of accounting, banking, computers, economics, engineering management, communications, finance, health care, human resources, insurance, international trends, law, management, marketing, public administration, real estate, taxation, transportation.
- Business Insights, EssentialsExtensive reference content from Gale's core business collection; easy-to-use company fundamentals and investment research reports; industry rankings, profiles, market share data, company histories, and more.
Videos
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Hints and Tips
It will be difficult to answer this question without taking into account the company's industry. Consider using Porter's Five Forces to understand the company's position in the Industry, and why they have made the strategic decisions that they have.
Porter's Five Forces Model
Other FAQs
Can my company have multiple strategies?
- Not really. In the extremely unlikely event that they do, pick one strategy and build an argument for that strategy.
Getting help with the assignment
Getting Help
- First and foremost, please watch the videos available in this guide. They will show you how to use the resources, and therefore find the information you need.
- If you need clarifications on the assignment, such as ratios or what each section means, please ask your TAs
- For questions about resources and research, Please visit the NEED HELP? page on this guide.