strategic plan

Company: Patagonia

Introduction

Summarize the purpose of the assignment and what the reader should expect to learn from your analysis

• Company profile

Name

Background (describe what the company does and offers)

• Industry (provide a primary SIC or state the industry your company is in)
• Revenue and profits (provide a table with the last three to five years of each and discuss trends)

Number of employees

Reputation

• Internal analysis (Week 3)
• Business model (identify the customer value proposition and profit formula)
• Vision and mission (discuss these overarching goals)
• Ratio analysis (interpret the ratios in the context of the company’s current strategic effectiveness)
• Core competencies (conduct a VRIO analysis to identify them)
• (Sustained) Competitive advantages (check whether the company is generating above-average returns)
• Value-chain analysis (three to four functions where the core competencies are created)

Overall strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) (two of each derived from your internal analysis) (Week 2)

External analysis (Week 2)

Macro-environment (conduct a PESTEL analysis)

• Industry environment (conduct a Porter’s five forces analysis)
• Overall opportunities (O) and threats (T) (two of each derived from your external analysis)
• Business-level strategy in its effectiveness (Week 4)
• Type of business-level strategy/strategies your company is using (discuss the competitive advantage [cost vs. leadership] and competitive scope [broad vs. narrow] providing relevant evidence)
• Examples of other competitive strategies deployed by competitors (identify a close competitor and briefly state what their business strategy is)
• Soundness of the company’s competitive strategy (Is it appropriate, and why?)
• Corporate-level strategy (Week 5)
• Type of diversification the company is using and the evidence (Is the company using related or unrelated diversification?)

Level of diversification of the company and evidence (e.g., low, moderate, or high, based on reliance on single source for revenue)

Means of diversification of the company and evidence (e.g., acquisitions, JVs)

• Appropriateness of the corporate-level strategy and evidence
• International strategy (Week 6)
• Type of international strategy utilized and evidence (e.g., multidomestic, transnational)

Type of entry modes used and evidence (exporting, international JVs)

Appropriateness of the international strategy and modes and evidence

• Problems

Based on your assessment of the company’s external and internal environment, as well as of its strategies, concisely state the main strategic problems the company is facing (two to three such problems)

Solution

• Briefly state an overarching solution for all the problems you have identified. The solution must be at the level of corporate- and business-level strategies. The elements of these two types of strategies should be clearly recognizable in the solution you propose
• Recommendations (Week 8)
• Translate your overarching solution expressed at the level of corporate- and business-level strategies into actionable items. For example, if one of the ways a company can address the problems you identified is via international expansion, determine what countries the company should enter, what its international strategy will be, which entry modes will be used, what company it might partner with, etc. Also, discuss potential strategy implementation concerns
• Conclusions

State your conclusions based on your assessment of the case of your company, restating the purpose and some of the key findings and recommendations