french final assignment
Milestone Activity
This Milestone encompasses Course Learning Outcomes (CLO) 5, 6, and 7.
Part 1: BCG Analysis
This milestone activity relates to CLO5 and analyzes a company's product mix. It will also appear in the Final Assessment Project. Draft ideas here and revise later.
What do I want you to do?
Complete a BCG using these steps:
Identify at least four products or services offered by your selected company.
Categorize those offerings in terms of their market growth rate and market share as either cash cows, stars, dogs, or question marks.
For each offering, identify whether money should be invested in them by the company and why. Cite any references used to support your claims in APA 7 format.
Why do I want you to do it?
Analyzing a company's offerings of products and services helps to organize what is working, what is not, and where new potential lies. This activity demonstrates CLO5 and is a component of the Final Assessment Project.
How do I want you to do it?
What format(s) should the assessment be in? A short paragraph about each offering should suffice.
What tools or resources might be needed/useful? Review Kennedy et al. (2020) Section 8.5
What to include in your submission
Your assignment submission should include:
BCG Analysis
Part 2: SWOT Analysis
This milestone activity combines internal and external analysis to give you an opportunity to identify appropriate strategies, uniting several of the previous lessons. It is also a component to draft for the Final Assessment Project.
What do I want you to do?
In this activity, you will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the company, analyze the opportunities and threats within the business landscape, and propose strategies to leverage the strengths to meet opportunities or dodge threats while avoiding weaknesses.
Internal Analysis
What is the company’s primary strategy, and is it working well?
What are the company’s strategic resources and capabilities (consider VRIO)?
Has the company recently shown an ability to innovate, pivot, or adapt?
Are the company’s prices and costs competitive?
Is the company competitively stronger or weaker than competitors?
What strategic issues and problems merit front-burner managerial attention?
From the previous answers, identify three primary strengths and three primary weaknesses of the company.
External Analysis
Does the industry offer attractive opportunities for growth?
What forces are driving industry changes (consider PESTEL trends and shifts)?
What market positions do industry rivals occupy (consider Porter’s Five Forces positions)?
What are the key success factors for future success in the company’s industry?
Does the industry offer good prospects for profitability?
From the previous answers, identify three significant opportunities and three threats to the company within the business landscape.
Strategizing
Match one of the strengths and weaknesses with one of the opportunities and threats. Consider how the company might make the most of the situation.
Create three of these situational pairings.
For each pairing, consider with other strengths, weakness, opportunities, or threats might also relate.
Consider the list of business strategies discussed in previous lessons. Choose one that fits each situational pairing best.
Rank your three strategy recommendations from most highly recommended to least.
Why do I want you to do it?
This activity demonstrates CLO6 and is used to create a draft that can be used in the Final Assessment Project. This practice formalizes the process of matching talents to unmet needs.
How do I want you to do it?
What format(s) should the assessment be in?
Copy the questions of the internal and external analyses and place them in bold. Answer each one in regular font. Include citations in APA 7 format to support your views.
For the strategizing section, list the three strategy proposals in ranked order with brief prose describing how it aligns with the strengths, weakness, opportunities, or threats, what you propose, and why you think it is opportune. Rank your three strategy recommendations from most highly recommended to least.
What tools or resources might be needed/useful?
Review Kennedy et al. (2020) Chapter 5
As with other activities in this class, because a SWOT analysis is so common. It is easy to find SWOT analyses online, both from legitimate and noncredible sources. Take caution in evaluating the sources that you use since a web search might lead you to a cheat site. You should not complete this activity by taking your ideas from one or more existing analyses. Your proposed strategies should be your ideas alone.
What to include in your submission
Your assignment submission should include:
SWOT Analysis
Part 3: SPACE Analysis
This milestone assessment is used to support strategic analyses and proposals, such as created in a BCG or SWOT analysis. It can be informed by the internal and external analyses from previous lessons, such as VRIO, PESTEL, and Porter's Five Forces. It demonstrates CLO 7 and is used to create a draft section that can be used for the Final Assessment Project.
What do I want you to do?
In this activity, complete a Strategic Position & ACtion Evaluation (SPACE) analysis using the following methods:
Select a company to analyze. It is easiest to continue to use the same company you have been analyzing throughout the semester.
Evaluate the company in terms of its internal financial strength.
Cash Flow: Review the company's Statement of Cash Flows. Is the net increase in cash during the year positive?
Leverage (DtoE ratio): Divide total debt by total equity. Is this value less than one?
Liquidity (current ratio): Divide current (short-term) assets by current (short-term) liabilities: Is this value greater than one?
Return on Assets (ROA): Divide net income by total assets. Is this value greater than one?
Evaluate the company in terms of the external environmental stability.
Rate of Inflation: Has the Consumer Price Index been under 3% for the last year? (PESTEL Economic)
Demand Variability: Have there been significant demand shifts in the company's industry recently? (consider early pandemic rushes that emptied shelves of some products or the oil crisis of the 1970s) (PESTEL Economic, Social)
Technological Changes: Has the industry been operating without major technological disruption within the last 20 years? (consider examples such as the introduction of digital cameras to film; MP3 music to discs; self-checkout aisles in grocery; ridesharing to taxis) (PESTEL Technological)
Competitive Pressure: Do either competitors or substitutes have power over the company? (See Porter's Five Forces)
Evaluate the company in terms of its internal sense of competitive advantage.
Market Share: Does your company have a meaningfully larger market share than its closest competition?
Product Development: Is your company's most popular offering (i.e., good or service) at a better product life cycle position than competitors'? (at growth or maturity while others are in introduction or decline)
Customer Loyalty: Does the company keep customers from switching to competitors or substitutes often? (See Porter's Five Forces)
Control Over Suppliers and Distributors: Do the company have power over suppliers? (See Porter's Five Forces)
Evaluate the company in terms of its external industry strength.
Growth Potential: Does the company show a favorable growth rate demonstrated by a climbing earnings per share (EPS) trend over the last 5-10 years?
Profit Potential: Have profits in the industry been increasing over the last five years?
Productive Resource Utilization: Can it generally be said that there has been increasing jobs, low layoffs, low turnover, and no threats of strikes in the industry in recent years?
Market Entry: Do new entrants have power over the company? (See Porter's Five Forces)
Draw intersecting x- and y-axes on a grid.
Label the intersection point zero (that is called the "origin"). All points on the x-axis to the right of the origin should be numbered increasingly +1 through +4, and all points on the x-axis to the left of the origin should be numbered decreasingly -1 through -4.
Similarly, all points on the y-axis above the origin should be numbered increasingly +1 through +4, and all points on the y-axis below the origin should be numbered decreasingly -1 through -4.
Your company's position on the x-axis is determined by moving left one space for every yes answer in Step 2 and right for every yes in Step 3.
Your company's position on the y-axis is determined by moving up one space for every yes answer in Step 4 and down for every yes in Step 4.
After marking each of the points in Steps 9 and 10, draw lines to intersect these two positions and a dot at the spot at which they intersect.
Determine a suitable strategy based on the quadrant in which your company's intersection of x- and y-axes plots lands. Consider the suggestions in the provided table.
| Q1 (top-left): Conservative
| Q2 (top-right): Aggressive
|
| Q3 (bottom-left): Defensive
| Q4 (bottom-right): Competitive
|
Why do I want you to do it?
Not everyone supports the credibility of a SWOT analysis. So, it is important to have alternative analyses to support business proposals to gain buy-in.
How do I want you to do it?
What format(s) should the assessment be in? Copy questions 1-5 in bold, and answer with a simple yes or no after each one in regular font. Insert your grid drawing and plots below the questions. Add a simple explanation of your chosen strategy below the grid.
What tools or resources might be needed/useful?
Your PESTEL and Porter's Five Forces analyses from previous lessons can help you here.
Your understanding of strategies from the previous lesson can help you here.
Be careful - do not copy a completed SPACE Matrix. Use your own, new work.
Note that many varieties of SPACE analyses are available and use different factors in their assessment. Please use the provided factors listed in these instructions rather than substitutes.
Citations for the resources provided within the links within the instructions are listed here:
Loth, R. (2022, March 1). Analyze cash flow the easy way. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/07/easycashflow.asp
Hayes, A. (2022, July 11). What is financial leverage, and why is it important? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverage.asp
Mueller, J. (2022, July 19). What financial liquidity is, asset classes, pros & cons, examples. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/07/liquidity.asp
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Consumer price index. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
Copp, C. M. (2022, December 14). Produce life cycle explained: Stage and examples. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/product-life-cycle.asp
McClure, B. (2022, August 23). How to analyze corporate profit margins. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/04/042804.asp
What to include in your submission
Your assignment submission should include:
Questions 1-5 and answers
Grid diagram created in SPACE Matrix style
A strategy suggestion
