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Strategy
Formulation
MODULE 3
Strategy Formulation
Module Description
This module deals with the corporate level, business and functional strategies. Chapter 3.1
describes how different corporate level strategies such as expansion, integration and
diversification provide direction to the organisations. Chapter 3.2 outlines the various business
level strategies which help them achieve and sustain competitive advantage. It also explains the
various functional strategies formulated from the corporate and business strategies and how
they help in achieving the objectives of the various functional areas and achieve operational
effectiveness.
By the end of this module, students will be able to analyse how organisations maximise
shareholders using corporate level strategies, maximise customer satisfaction using business
level and how functional strategies help in achieving the higher level strategies.
Chapter 3.1
Concentration, Integration and Diversification Strategies
Chapter 3.2
Business and Functional Level Strategies
Chapter Table of Contents
Chapter 3.1
Instructional Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this chapter, you are expected to:
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Introduction
Environmental appraisal generates ways for alternative strategic alternatives. It is used to find
business opportunities and risks. It also analyses the factors that affect a business. Strategic
managers are interested in assessing the environmental opportunities and threats for the
organisation so that effective strategy can be formulated. Let us see an example of Café Coffee
Day to understand how organisations use environmental appraisal for their advantage.
Let us discuss about some of the strategies adopted by Café Coffee Day. To take the maximum
advantage as a first mover in the market, Café Coffee Day has gone beyond its obvious choice
of food menu. It is the market leader in terms of retail footprints with around 1586 cafes at 220
cities and 600 value express kiosks. But just a presence is not enough in a hypercompetitive
segment. Hence, Café Coffee Day started home-delivery service too, which was contrary to the
concept of a coffee house where people come for the experience. This led Café Coffee Day to
reform their home-delivery menu with items such as filter coffee and brewed tea flasks, hot
dogs, Afghani chicken biryani, tawa pizza and many more. Currently, Café Coffee Day has tied
up with Swiggy, a third-party vendor to serve home-delivery needs. It also plans to associate
with B2B delivery players like Grab and Roadrunner through an app-based platform. Café
Coffee Day is also concentrating on providing the right experience to its customers. Recently,
it has launched its customer-feedback app which is also helpful in personalising offers,
promotions and other discounts to the customers. With the advent of cashless drive in India,
Café Coffee Day started free charge to facilitate the customers for easy payment of their
transactions. But expert says that any company should not go far from their core product as
Café Coffee Day would have to concentrate more on the coffee service than anything else.
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This is not only the story of the Café Coffee Day; every company has the same scenario. All the
companies just focus on improving their product line, business processes and customer
experience to earn more revenues. But have you ever wondered about the ways that a company
adapts to achieve their set goals. Yes, the answer is to strategise timely and effectively.
In this chapter, we will study about various strategies that a company adopts so that they
manufacture high-value products and services, products move off the shelves quickly and saves
manufacturer’s time.
Corporate level strategy includes strategic scope of the organisation as a whole. The process of
formulating corporate strategies is known as corporate strategic planning or corporate
planning. The outputs from corporate level strategy are usually in the form of performance
targets for the divisions. It also includes guidance on market definition as well as geographic
scope. For example, the subsidiaries of a multinational bank may be defined by the country in
which they operate. In this case, the corporate business strategy would set profit targets for each
country bank. The corporate strategy would yield to the country banks as to the strategies they
pursue in generating these profits. The country-level banks would have their own business unit
level strategies.
1. Expansion Strategies
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by the firm where it thinks of adopting its business line. This expansion can happen in terms
of customer groups, customer functions and technology alternatives. However, one question
arises here that states why the firm needs to adopt the expansion? Let us see the reasons behind
the adoption of expansion strategy. It could be survival, higher profits, increased prestige,
economies of scale, larger market share and social benefits. It is also important for the managers
to have high degree of achievement and recognition which helps organisations to achieve their
desired results.
Let us discuss a few examples of how companies have managed to do expansion of their
organisations strategically.
a) Let us say a diaper company expands the product line by offering their range of diapers
to the old-age people.
b) A stock-broking agent starts offering customised services at home to the small investors
who were earlier not catered by his organisation.
• Higher management in the organisation feels satisfied with the expansion as it shows
them powerful in the industry.
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2. Stability Strategies
A stability strategy involves a non-expansion strategy where the organisation does not spend
on expansion and thinks of stabilising at a point. This means an organisation does not enter
into a new venture or introduce new products but works on improving the existing products.
• When an organisation plans to merge its position in the industry where it is operating.
• When an organisation is in the recession phase and interprets slowdown in the industry
where it operates. It is also possible to that an organisation wants more cash in their
accounts than investing on the capital.
• When an organisation has more debt in the balance sheet, they want to seek more
money in the form of cash and thus the only option left is the stability strategy.
• When a product or industry has reached its maturity phase, it is important for the
organisation to concentrate on the stability strategy.
• When the gains from the past are less than the costs involved.
• No change Strategy: It involves not bringing any new change to the firm owing to the
losses or no income from the current ventures.
• Profit Strategy: It involves concentrating on earning profits from the existing product
line.
• Proceed with Caution Strategy: It involves expansion but with extreme less amount so
that any loss, if incurred, can be managed.
• Let us suppose that an electronic company has started offering after sales service to
improve its quality.
• A cake manufacturing company has improved its technology to provide same cake but
with better taste.
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3. Retrenchment Strategy
Retrenchment strategy involves reducing the number of product lines or business operations
so that expenses can be controlled. This strategy is adopted to reach a more stable financial
position in the market. It allows firm to eliminate its activities through a significant diminution
in its business operations. Thus, an organisation can either restructure its business operations
or discontinue it, so as to invigorate its financial position. There are three types of
Retrenchment Strategies:
• Turnaround Strategy: This strategy helps an organisation to realise that the decision
made earlier was wrong and has to be discarded before it further affects the profitability
of the company.
• Divestment Strategy: It is a strategy used by businesses when they reduce the scope of
their business activities. Divestment involves eliminating a portion of any business
organisation. Firms have to select to sell or close or spin-off any business unit.
• Liquidation Strategy: This is the last strategy adopted by the organisations when they
sell off their assets and final closure of the organisation.
The following are the indicators that necessitate a firm to follow this strategy:
• Continuous losses
• Obsolete technology
• Outdated products/processes
• Poor management
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Concentration strategies are divided into three types which can be better understood with the
help of Ansoff’s Product Market Matrix. The Ansoff’s Matrix was developed by H. Igor Ansoff’s
and was published in Harvard Business Review in 1957 in an article named as, ‘Strategies for
diversification’.
Based on the aforementioned figure, concentration strategies are divided into three
categories.
1. Market Penetration: It involves selling more products to the same market. The
organisation can also concentrate on existing markets and available products. Besides,
market penetration also focuses on increasing market share of existing products,
restructuring the existing market and making it compatible to the business, establishing
supremacy in the existing and new markets.
2. Market Development: It involves selling same products to new markets. It also involves
creating new customers with the same existing products. It is not necessary to sell the
products in the new geographical market. Sometimes, it is sold to demographic
segments where a new customer base is created.
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3. Product Development: It involves selling new products to the same market. This
strategy concentrates on developing a new class of products that are never introduced
to any segment earlier. A very good example is selling the space-saving foldable
furniture in India by IKEA.
Some good examples of concentration marketing include Rolls Royce and Volkswagen who
have always concentrated on a few upper-class segments of consumers only.
• This strategy improves the skills of any organisation in one sector and thus it becomes
specialised in the area.
• Systems and processes are kept simple because of fewer complications and thus the
workforce is familiar with them.
• Concentration strategies rely on only one area or industry. The potential for industry
growth, attractiveness and maturity are the variable factors. If an industry becomes too
packed with competitors, its charisma reduces with existing players.
• Any organisation who has heavily invested in only one domain faces product
obsolescence, market uncertainty and coping with latest technologies.
• Concentration strategy also faces cash-flow issues. A business needs a large cash flow
for its expansion; whereas a cash surplus is seen when business becomes settled.
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Self-assessment Questions
1) Which strategy is known as the growth or intensification strategy?
a) Stability b) Expansion
c) Retrenchment d) Concentration
4) Which of the following is the reason for adopting the retrenchment strategy?
a) Organisation becomes unviable b) Expansion followed by consolidation
c) Advantages from experience curve d) Environment is stable
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3.1.4 Integration Strategies
Integration strategies involve in combining two strategies of an organisation. It occurs when
two companies are merged or one company buys another company. It takes place when two
companies of different levels on the distribution merge. An organisation may move in any
direction in a value chain, upwards or downwards. It is difficult to achieve integration among
two different companies because there is more number of levels. There are many activities that
are to be integrated such as project planning, project management, design and implementation
of application programming interfaces, web services and more.
The major reason behind opting integration strategy is the transaction cost economics. It is a
branch of economics that explains the relationship between transactions and their costs. It
helps an organisation to decide whether it should ‘make or buy’ a particular product. If the cost
of acquiring the product from the supplier is less, then it should be acquired from the supplier
else company should manufacture the product. In such cases, firm adopts integration strategies.
Ansoff had given another matrix that explained different types of integration. According to
him, any firm operates on two dimensions namely products and new functions. Based on these
dimensions, integration strategy is divided into two types. Let us discuss the types of
Integration strategies.
1. Horizontal Integration
• Growing industry
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Let us discuss some advantages of horizontal integration.
• Economies of Scale: An organisation can produce more quantity if there are more
resources at lower cost.
• Ability to enter new markets: Organisation acquiring other companies would be able
to acquire foreign market as well related to the acquired company.
• There are many legal obligations from the other company’s side which needs to be
studied. The management of the newly formed company should be able to manage the
acquired company more efficiently.
2. Vertical Integration
A vertical integration is a competitive strategy where the organisation takes a complete control
over one or more stages in the production or sometimes distribution of a product. This
competitive strategy is adopted to ensure a control over the supply chain of the products. It
integrates an organisation in two ways that is either with units supplying raw material which is
known as backward integration or with distribution channels that carry the products to the
final user which is known as front integration. A good example of vertical integration may be
a super market who acquires control of a few farms of fresh vegetables which is known as
backward integration or like Flipkart who have their own distribution channel, e-Kart which is
front integration.
There are many reasons given below because of which a company can opt vertical
integration:
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Advantages of Vertical Integration
• Helps organisations to collect overall profit that otherwise goes to the distributors and
retailers.
1. Concentric Diversification: This strategy allows an organisation to add more but similar
products in the existing product line. A good example is when HP started selling laptop
with twisted screens along with the original laptops. This strategy is used in technical and
fast-moving good category. For example, a Jam manufacturer also manufactures salsa sauce
by using its existing facility. Strategists also follow certain guidelines while adopting
concentric diversification. These are as follows:
• Sale of current products should be increased by adding new products in the portfolio.
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• The management team of the organisation should be efficient enough.
• Check when the sales and profits are declining on annual basis.
• Organisation should have sufficient managerial talent to compete in the new industry.
• Both the acquired and the acquiring firm should have financial synergy.
• Increases operational and administrative costs and negates the synergies realised
through related diversification.
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(iii) Diversification Strategies – Indian Context
The bigger organisations in Indian industry comprise public and private sectors.
Diversification is usually used by the large corporation sectors to adapt themselves to the rapid
changes in the business environment. It helps them to grow and improve their performance
strategically. As diversification means entry of firms into new markets with new products, it
requires change in managerial and technical competence.
With this, we have studied various strategies that are applied in different business situations.
The current scenario of the businesses involves rapid expansion by taking advantage of the
progressing Indian economy. However, in Indian scenario, organisations rely more on
integration and diversification than concentration to quench their thirst of growth. There is
possibility to see such trends in the coming years as well in India.
Self-assessment Questions
8) A hospital acquiring another hospital is an example of which type of integration?
a) Concentric b) Horizontal
c) Vertical d) Merged
9) Apple designed the software and hardware including the processor for iPhone. This is
an example of __________type of integration.
a) Concentric b) Horizontal
c) Vertical d) Merged
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10) Which of the following is a pitfall of vertical integration?
a) Reduced cost of coordination
b) Technological obsolescence
c) Decreased exit barriers
d) Availability of information from suppliers
11) Johnson and Johnson started as a surgical dressing company and today is a healthcare
company producing consumer products, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. This is
an example of ____________ type of diversification?
a) Related b) Unrelated
c) Semi-related d) Not allied
12) Samsung produces televisions, tablets, smart phones, apartments, military hardware,
ships and other products. Which type of diversification does it follow?
a) Related b) Unrelated
c) Semi-related d) Allied
13) Which of the followings is the reason for adopting diversification strategies?
a) To maximise risk
b) To capitalise on its capabilities
c) To maximise weaknesses
d) To minimise organisational strengths
14) Which of the companies given below follows e-Portal pattern for digitalisation?
a) Landmark books b) Paper exchange
c) Yahoo d) Vertical Net
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Summary
o The four strategic alternatives that a firm can consider are stability, expansion,
retrenchment and combination.
o Corporate level strategies are basically about the choice of direction that the firm
adopts in order to achieve its objectives.
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o Related diversification enables diversification of the organisation from its original
business as well as keeps it close to it in terms of relatedness.
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Terminal Questions
1. Explain the four strategic alternatives available for an organisation.
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Answer Keys
Self-assessment Questions
Question No. Answer
1 b
2 c
3 c
4 a
5 c
6 b
7 a
8 b
9 c
10 b
11 a
12 b
13 b
14 c
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Activity
Description:
Browse the internet to find Concentration, Integration and Diversification Strategies followed
by the Reliance Conglomerate.
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Bibliography
e-References
External Resources
• AzharKazmi. Strategic Management and Business Policy. Tata McGraw Hill
Education Private Limited. 2008
Video Links
Topic Link
Strategy Formulation: Concentration,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH44C5OPuMA
Integration, Diversification (COM)
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Notes:
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