Pfizer pharmaceutical patents provide what important characteristic that supports inimitability?

Liberty University BUSI 400 Individual Assignment 2 Strategic Analysis Part II Power answer A+ Guarantee:

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The resource-based view of the firm suggests that the _________of the firm are due to its endowment of strategic resources that are valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and costly to substitute.

Pfizer pharmaceutical patents provide what important characteristic that supports inimitability?

Gerber Products Company brands its baby food and is an example of

a resource that is potentially inimitable, making it difficult for competitors to copy. What characteristic of sustainable competitive advantage is involved?

In industries like consulting, advertising, and tax preparation, clients tend to be very loyal to individual professionals employed by a firm, instead of to the firm itself. This enhances employee

In the balanced scorecard, cycle time, employee skills, and productivity are part of the ______ perspective.

Competitive Analytics at CarMax

CarMax has transferred data analytics into a competitive advantage. It has utilized analytics to help streamline its processes and enhance the information transfer efficiency within the organization.

The ability of CarMax to create a competitive advantage through its information systems is discussed, as well as the value created from its analytics and how that is leveraged within the firm.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

Organizations increasingly face the challenge of making sense of the enormous amount of data available for analysis. While not too long ago companies used data analytics almost exclusively for financial forecasting and supply chain management, businesses increasingly demand that their information systems generate competitive advantage. This development led to the emergence of a new breed of information systems, also known as competitive analytics systems.

Consider CarMax, the largest U.S. retailer of used cars, for an example of how competitive analytics looks in practice. With over $12 billion in 2014 revenues, CarMax’s success has many reasons, such as its compelling service offering, no haggle prices, and proven quality guaranteed by its 125-point inspection.

Besides these more traditional sources of competitive advantage, CarMax also operates a proprietary information system that captures, analyzes, interprets, and disseminates information about all cars on CarMax lots. CarMax’s data analytics helps track “every purchase, number of test drives and credit applications per car, and color preferences in every demographic and region,” states Katharine W. Kenny, CarMax vice president of investor relations. The ability to integrate various value chain activities in this proprietary system allows CarMax to realize a competitive advantage.

The key features of this system provide CarMax management with real-time business insights into different store operations, such as inventory management, pricing, and sales consultant productivity. This advanced information system allows CarMax to decrease uncertainties in traditionally hard to forecast areas, such as

inventory management, allowing management to improve

operational efficiency and anticipate future trends. Moreover, CarMax invests heavily in store technology, with some CarMax stores using Apple iPads to assist customers, who are becoming more tech savvy. According to CEO Tom Folliard, all these IT initiatives are targeted to give customers “a better experience from the time they walk in the door to the time they leave, so they are more likely to buy a car and they’re more likely to tell their friends about it.”

Sources: Kiron, D. & Shockley, R. 2011. Creating business value with analytics. MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(1): 57–63; Felberbaum, M. 2012. CEO: CarMax focused on customer experience. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, June 25: np.

Making “sense of the enormous amount of data available” to it is a(n) ________ CarMax.

When CarMax uses its information system to better manage its inventory of vehicles, it is primarily improving its ________.

CarMax’s information analytics system integrates various activities of CarMax’s ___________ by tracking and analyzing factors ranging from test drives per vehicle to sales consultant productivity.

CarMax’s proprietary information system is a valuable resource that its competitors do not possess and will have a difficult time imitating or replacing with something else. Therefore, it gives CarMax ____________.

Amazon Prime:

Difficult to Copy

Amazon’s Prime service has been the foundation of tremendous success for Amazon since 2008. Competitors have had a difficult time providing a comparable service, and customers have flocked to the site because of the unique product offering Prime provides.

Resources must be difficult to imitate in order for a company to realize sustainable competitive advantage. This case discusses how Amazon’s Prime service has enhanced company value and

proven to be a difficult resource for competitors to copy.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

Amazon Prime, introduced in 2004, is a free-shipping service that guarantees delivery of products within two days for an annual fee of $99. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, it may be the most ingenious and effective customer loyalty program in all of ecommerce, if not retail in general. It converts casual shoppers into Amazon addicts who gorge on the gratification of having purchases reliably appear two days after they order. Analysts describe Prime as one of the main factors driving Amazon’s stock price up nearly 300 percent from 2008 to 2010. Also, it is one of the main reasons why Amazon’s sales grew 30 percent during the recession, while other retailers suffered.

Analysts estimate that Amazon Prime has more than 5 million members in the United States, a small slice of Amazon’s 152 million active buyers worldwide. However, analysts claim that Prime members increase their purchases on the site by about 150 percent after they join and may be responsible for as much as 20 percent of Amazon’s overall sales in the United States. Such shoppers are considered the “whales” of the $161 billion (in 2011) U.S. e-commerce market, one of the fastest-growing parts of U.S. retail. And, according to Hudson Square Research, Amazon, with a hefty 8 percent of the U.S. e-commerce market in 2010, is the single biggest online retailer in the United States.

Amazon Prime has proven to be extremely hard for rivals to copy. Why? It enables Amazon to exploit its wide selection, low prices, network of third-party merchants, and finely tuned distribution system. All that while also keying off that faintly irrational human need to maximize the benefits of a club that you have already paid to join. Yet Amazon’s success also leads to increased pressure from both public and private entities. For a long time, Amazon was able to avoid collecting local sales taxes because Amazon did not have a local sales presence in many states. This practice distorts competition and strains already tight state coffers. Some states have used a combination of legislation and litigation to convince Amazon to collect sales taxes; Amazon began collecting Texas state sales tax in July 2012.

Moreover, rivals—both online and off—have realized the increasing threat posed by Prime and are rushing to respond. For example, in October 2010, a consortium of more than 20 retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, and Toys ’R’ Us, banded together to offer their own copycat $99, two-day shipping program, ShopRunner, which applies to products across their websites. As noted by Fiona Dias, the executive who administers the program, “As Amazon added more merchandising categories to Prime, retailers started feeling the pain. They have finally come to understand that Amazon is an existential threat and that Prime is the fuel of the engine.” Brick-and-mortar retailers are also trying to fight back by matching Amazon’s prices, as they did during the 2012 holiday season, and by tightly integrating their on- and offline offerings.

Sources: Stone, B. 2010. What’s in the box? Instant gratification. Bloomberg Businessweek, November 29–December 5: 39–40; Kaplan, M. 2011. Amazon Prime: 5 million members, 20 percent growth. www.practicalcommerce.com, September 16: np; Fowler, G. A. 2010. Retailers team up against Amazon.

www.wsj.com, October 6: np; Halkias, M. 2012. Amazon to collect

sales tax in Texas. Dallas Morning News, April 28: 4A.

Amazon Prime was a key driver in the success of Amazon in the midst of a recession, as the company saw sales increase _______ between 2008 to 2010.

According to Hudson Square Research in 2010, how did Amazon rank among the largest online retailers in the United States?

Which of the following has become a political pressure from states on the business practices of Amazon?

ShopRunner was created in 2010 by a consortium of retailers, including ___________, ____________, and ___________, to compete directly against Amazon’s Prime service.

SWOT Analysis

This video explains the SWOT Analysis.

Click the ► button to watch the video. To view a video in full screen, click the full-screen button [ ] in the lower right hand corner of the video player. Then, answer the questions that follow.

Managers use SWOT Analysis to ______.

Offensive strategic actions consider how the company can ______.

A firm overcoming weakness so that it can take advantage of an opportunity is called a(n) ______ strategic action.

________ capital can be defined as the difference between the market value and book value of a firm, or a measure of its intangible assets.

Human capital does not include the ______________ of an individual.

Engineering drawings, software code, and patents are examples of

New knowledge involves the continual interaction between __________ and __________ knowledge.

In order to fully leverage the talents of the best and brightest employees, a firm should be concerned with

Initiatives to develop human capital should be directed __________ to maintain a competitive advantage in the current knowledge economy.

Added insight and cultural sensitivity, and heterogeneity in decision making and problem solving are some of the arguments supporting ________ in the workplace.

Advantages of effective social networks for career success include all the following except

Ratio analysis can be made more meaningful in all the following

ways EXCEPT by

The management of intellectual property involves all the

following except

Financial Analysis: Procter & Gamble

The following questions are about key financials that impart useful insights into the financial health of Procter & Gamble (P&G). The financials offer quantitative measurements of the success or failure of P&G’s strategies.

Part 1: Key Financial Ratios Using available data in the case, calculate the requested financial ratios. Round all numbers to the nearest hundredth. For example, answers should look like −0.05 or 1.33.

Part 2: Annual Growth Activity

Exhibits 1, 2, and 4 in the case provide performance information for Procter & Gamble for the years 2015 through 2017. For each item listed below, calculate the rate of annual growth (or decline) from 2015 to 2016 and for 2016 to 2017. All calculations should be rounded to one decimal (e.g., 12.7%).

Part 3: Questions

Based on the case and previous calculations, please answer the following short answer questions. Note: Your instructor will need to manually grade these questions.

1. Refer to Exhibit 4 (Financial Breakdown). What were the largest and smallest divisions by net sales in 2017? Identify the one most important division in terms of the proportionate net earnings for

the company.

1. Based on the financials presented in Exhibits 1 and 2, how would you describe P&G’s financial position in the years 2016 and 2017? Do you think the company ought to make any major changes to improve its financial outlook? What changes would

you suggest?

An important implication of the balanced scorecard is that managers need to look at their job as primarily balancing stakeholder demands.

Because primary activities like inbound logistics, operations, and outbound logistics are applicable only to tangible goods, value-chain analysis is not appropriate for service organizations.

__________ ratios reflect whether a firm is efficiently using its resources.

In value-chain analysis, research and development is a broader concept than technology development.

Intangible resources are not as difficult for competitors to imitate as tangible ones.

The prosumer concept in value-chain analysis is promising because it has the potential to generate ideas and lower costs for firms and to create greater satisfaction for customers.

Microsoft has improved the ________ part of its value chain by providing formal reviews of its suppliers, which has helped to clarify expectations for them.

Which of these is not an example of socially complex organizational

phenomena?

All activities associated with transforming inputs into the final product form are known as ______ in the value chain.

A primary weakness of the balanced scorecard is that it fails to complement financial indicators with operational measures of customer satisfaction, internal processes, and the organization’s innovation and improvement activities.

Just-in-time systems are considered part of which primary activity in the value chain?

In value-chain analysis, primary activities include human resource management and procurement.

In value-chain analysis, value is measured by total revenue.

ConAgra and Cargill imitated the meat packing company, Iowa Beef

Processors by automating their plants. This reduced the IBP competitive advantage because its capabilities were easily imitated.

An individual who uses the contacts they develop to pursue their own interests and agendas that may be inconsistent with the organization objectives is one potential downside of

Why did the artist, Pablo Picasso, become wealthy during his lifetime and the artist, Vincent van Gogh, remain poor his entire life? Works by both artists now sell for over 100,000,000 USD.

Companies have found that referrals from their own employees are not generally an effective approach to recruiting top talent.

Email is an effective means of communicating a wide variety of information and employees should use it extensively for personal reasons.

When leaving a job, desirable knowledge employees are most likely to find new employment on Internet career sites and go alone to work for complete strangers.

Sales and engineering departments are a classic example of two groups whose members traditionally interact with their peers rather than across groups. This is best described as ________ in social network analysis.

Managers use __________ for developing human capital.

Intellectual property rights are not as easy to define and protect as property rights for physical assets (e.g., plant and equipment).

Attracting top talent is not a challenge for many organizations. In the current economy, knowledge workers typically have a limited number of employment opportunities.

Social capital is based on the skills and abilities of an individual employee, not on the network of relationships within a firm.

Firms such as Oracle, Google, and Apple will tend to have a lower ratio of market value to book value than industrial companies such as Nucor Steel.

Despite geographic or time separation of members, electronic teams can be very effective in generating social capital.

________ teams complete tasks primarily through email communication.

In the current economy, reliance on the three traditional financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flow) has decreased.

The task-first relationship with fellow employees, in which emotions and personal life are checked at the door, is becoming more common and essential with the current increased focus on efficiency.

________ include the ability to seize new opportunities, generate new knowledge, and reconfigure existing assets and capabilities.

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