Untitled Quiz

Study Notes

Planning involves determining what to do, planning how to accomplish it, and determining why.

Stakeholders are people or organizations affected by a company or influencing it.
- Stakeholders include internal stakeholders (e.g., employees, unions, organizational culture, shareholders) and external stakeholders (e.g., customers, suppliers, competitors, government, public, market demand, technological developments, demographic conditions).

The next step after SWOT analysis is to list them (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).

Calm Seas has competitive advantages like being faster, bigger, cheaper, stronger, more luxurious, and having locally sourced suppliers.
- The company is also considered sustainable and customer-oriented.

Cost Leadership Strategy: Pursue lower costs, reduce the selling price to increase market share, match competitors' pricing and make more profit.
Differentiation Strategy: Make the product stand out with strong quality, features, and service to justify a higher price.
Focus Strategy: Focus on a specific market niche.
- Understand the needs of that specific niche and cater to them successfully.

Growth Strategy: Expand production.
Stability Strategy: Maintain the current situation (no new markets or products).
Retrenchment Strategy: Cut back, sell assets, lay off employees, and leave certain countries.
Combination Strategy: Expand in certain areas, maintain in others, and reduce the amount or types of products/services in some areas.

Decide how to achieve the goal.
Develop a plan with:
- What to do
- Who's responsible
- Steps and deadlines. (An example table is provided in the notes).

A company might use a growth strategy to develop new products, address their advertising weakness, and address their threat of a lack of skilled workers.
The plan for Calm Seas should include detailed goals, responsibilities, and steps with deadlines.
Specific examples of actions (e.g., developing new products, cross-training employees) are in the notes, along with how to deal with them (prototype presentation deadlines, development progress).
Homework includes analyzing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) from a class discussion and applying it to Calm Seas and a company on campus.
Evaluating mission statements of local companies from various perspectives (clarity, purpose, decision-making, etc.) is also part of the homework task.
A discussion on competitive advantage and how it affects organizational planning is part of the assignment.