According to Michael Porter, five industry forces determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability. Which of the following is one of those forces Porter identified?
bargaining power of suppliers
According to the text, valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable resources can produce sustainable competitive advantage only if they are ____ resources.
According to the text, which of the following is a pitfall of planning?
a false sense of certainty based on faulty assumptions
An ad for a major brand of clothes washer reads, "Since our humble beginnings back in 1950, we have been dedicated to building machines with superior cleaning power, reliability, and style." This manufacturer is more than likely using which kind of positioning strategy?
After earning $8 billion in profit, Royal Dutch/Shell decided to strive to double its profits within the next five years. Which classical management function would be instrumental in achieving this goal?
A(n) ____ is a resource that is impossible or extremely costly or difficult for other firms to duplicate.
A(n) ____ resource is a resource that is not controlled or
possessed by many competing firms. 999 rare
____ are the targets that managers use to measure whether their firm has developed the core competencies that it needs to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
Strategic reference points
An Australian manufacturer of surfboards wants to increase awareness of its brand in the U.S. market. A ____ plan to accomplish this objective might be to host a series of surfboard competitions in California .
Aveda is a manufacturer and marketer of cosmetics, perfumes, hair-care, and skin-care products. To differentiate its products from other similar brands, Aveda focuses on educating its customers on general skin and hair care. Its salespeople are trained to answer questions and help customers find solutions. Aveda has used customer education and employee training to ____.
create a competitive advantage
Companies in the chemical industry are struggling to attract the most talented college graduates. One of the biggest challenges facing these companies is attracting new talent to organizations with an "old economy" image. A situational analysis would term this challenge a(n) ____.
Companies often choose a ____ strategy when their external environment doesn't change much or after they have struggled with periods of explosive growth.
Companies that are following a ____ strategy would be most likely to try to improve the way in which they sell the same goods or services to the same customers.
A ____ exists when there is a gap between a desired state (what managers want) and an existing state (the situation that the managers are facing).
The goal of a company was to reduce the expenses incurred by the sales force. A manager examining weekly expense sheets would be using which of the accepted methods for tracking progress toward goal achievement?
gathering and providing performance feedback
The highly fragmented chemical industry in Europe has experienced decreasing profits in an industry reluctance to change the way it conducts business, especially in how it competes against lower-priced U.S. imports. This is an example of ____.
In an attempt to stop declining profitability, ICI, a British chemical company, deleted petrochemical products from its production and concentrated on specialty chemicals, a less capital-intensive, less cyclical business. What type of a grand strategy was ICI using?
____ is a systematic process of defining problems, evaluating alternatives, and choosing optimal solutions.
Rational decision making
____ is responsible for developing strategic plans that make clear how the company will serve customers and position itself against competitors in the next two to five years.
One method of weighing decision criteria uses ____, which is a process where each decision is compared directly to every other criterion.
One of the benefits of planning is how it ____.
encourages people to work harder for extended periods
An organization is experiencing ____ when it is reluctant to change strategies or competitive practices that have been successful in the past.
An organization is experiencing ____ when there is a discrepancy between upper management's intended strategy and the strategy actually implemented by the lower levels of management.
Planning is ultimately based upon ____.
choosing a goal and developing a method or strategy to achieve that goal
____ planning keeps options open by making small, simultaneous investments in many alternative plans.
Planning works best when the goals and action plans at the ____ of the organization support the goals and action plans at the ____ of the organization.
bottom and middle; top
____ plans are plans that specify how a company will use resources, budgets, and people to accomplish specific goals within its mission.
The purpose of a ____ strategy is to turn around very poor company performance by shrinking the size or scope of the business.
A sustainable competitive advantage exists for an organization when other companies have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate the advantage and ____.
those companies have, for the moment, stopped trying to duplicate the advantage
There are three kinds of ____ plans. They are single-use plans, standing plans, and budgets.
Top management is responsible for developing long-term ____ that make clear how the company will serve customers and position itself against competitors in the next two to five years.
The two major approaches to corporate-level strategy are ____.
grand strategies and the portfolio strategy
When Coca-Cola acquired a water-treatment and bottling plant so it could produce and market Dasani brand bottled water, it was an example of ____.
When doing an analysis of strategic groups to assess external environmental threats and opportunities, ____ firms are firms that use related but somewhat different strategies than ____ firms.
Which of the following is a commonly used method for increasing goal commitment?
encouraging worker participation in goal setting
Which of the following is a mechanism used to examine external threats and opportunities facing a firm as well as its internal strengths and weaknesses?
a situational analysis
Which of the following is NOT one of the five industry forces that determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability?
existing complementary products
Which of the following must be met if a firm's resources are to be used to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage
imperfectly imitable resources
Which of the following statements is true about how the portfolio strategy can be used to help managers acquire companies that fit well with the rest of their corporate portfolio?
Risk can be reduced through related diversification (creating or acquiring companies in related businesses).