Assignment Questions SM

1 Wal-Mart Discount Operations

1. What, historically, has been Wal-Mart’s key sources of Competitive advantage in
discount retailing?
2. How sustainable is Wal-Mart’s Competitive Advantage in discount retailing in
1986?
3. Will Sam’s Wholesale Clubs prove as big a success for Wal-Mart as its discount
stores?

2. Biocon Ltd.: Building a Biotech Powerhouse

1. Why has Biocon been so successful?
2. Explore arguments in favor of success in future?
3. What are the reasons for concerns going forward?
4. Develop action plan for board meeting

3. Komatsu Limited
1. What are the sources of Komatsu’s success?
2. How was the company able to challenge Caterpillar when so many larger and better
established companies- like Internal Harvester, John Deere and J.I.Case-had failed?
3. How are environmental forces and industry changes likely to affect Komatsu’s
competitive position vis-à-vis Cat? What recommendations you may have Ryoichi
Kawai? For Lee Morgan?

4. Apple Inc. in 2015

Q1. What, historically, had been Apple’s competitive advantages?

Q2. Analyze the PC Industry? Why did Apple, struggled historically in PCs?

Q3. Have sustainable is Apple’s competitive position in smartphones?

Q4. Evaluate Apple’s strategy for Apple watch? Has Tim Cook taken the right approach?
Would you suggest any course correction?
 5. Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service
Q1. What factors accounted for the extraordinary success for Starbucks in the early 1990s?
What was so compelling about Starbucks value proposition? What brand image did Starbucks
develop during this period?

Q2. Why have Starbuck’s customer satisfaction score declined? Has the company’s service
declined, or simply measuring satisfaction the wrong way?

Q3.How does the Starbucks of 2002 differ from the Starbucks of 1992?

Q4.Describe the ideal Starbucks customer from a profitable standpoint. What would it atke to
ensure that this customer is highly satisfied? How valuable is a highly satisfied customer to
Starbucks?

Q5.Should Starbucks make the $40 million investment in labor in the stores? What’s the goal
of this investment? Is it profitable for a megabrand to deliver customer intimacy?

6. Google Inc. 2014

1. Google currently enjoys approximately 70% market share of US searches, and well
above 90% in many other countries. Do you expect search business to become more
concentrated (i.e. dominated by fewer firms)? Is search is a winner-take-all-business?
2. In renewing its deal with AOL, COULD Google afford to pay AOL more than 100%
of the revenue generated from AOL searches? How did Microsoft maximum
affordable bid for AOLs search traffic compare to Google’s?
3. Currently 95% plus of Google’s revenue comes from online advertising. How
important it is for Google to pursue alternative revenue streams? Which alternatives
are the most promising?
4. Do you view Google’s governance structure, corporate culture and organizational
processes as strength or potential limitations?

7. Newell Company: Corporate strategy

Q1. Does Newell have successful corporate strategy: Does the company add value to the
business within its portfolio?

Q2. What are Newell’s distinctive resources and capabilities?

Q3. What challenges did the company face in the late 1990s?

Q4. In this context does the acquisition of Calphalon make sense? Rubbermaid?
 8. Phillips versus Matsushita: The Competitive Battle Continues
1. How did Philips become the leading consumer electronics company in the world in the
postwar era? What distinctive competence did they build? What distinctive incompetencies?

2. How did Matsushita succeed in displacing Philips as No. 1? What were its distinctive
competencies and incompetencies?

3. What do you think of the change that each company has made to date- the objectives, the
implementation and the impact? Why is the change so hard for both of them ?

4. What recommendations you would make to Gerald Kleisterlee? To Fumio Ohtsubo?

9. Globalization of CEMEX
1. . What benefits have been derived by CEMEX and other cement industry from
globalization?
2. How do the firms from the domestic type of industry derive added value from
globalization?
3. How CEMEX did outperformed its global competitors?
4. How do Holderbank compare with CEMEX? What does the comparison of data from
exhibit 4.8 suggest about the competitive game played out in global cement
industry?
5. What entry strategies are followed by CEMEX in its globalization?
6. Is there a major difference in the country contexts entered by CEMEX in early and
subsequent markets?
7. What strategy would you recommend for further globalization of CEMEX? What kind
of countries it should target for future expansion?