Use the guidelines below to prepare a written Strategic Case Analysis of the chosen case.  Remember to follow APA guidelines. Submit your completed Strategic Case Analysis by Sunday at midnight. 

The chosen case is 

Assignment tools and guidelines:

• Review: Attached rubric.

• Review: Analyzing a Case Study and Writing a Case Study Analysis in Hill et al. (2020). This will tell you how to read the case study in such a way as to prepare you for the following analyses. 

• Be sure to answer any related questions included below:

GUIDELINES

Step 1: Analyze the company’s mission statement and its corporate objectives.

• Be aware that not all text cases have mission statements.  You may have to go to the web to get them.

• After reading the case, can you determine what defined objectives the company wants to achieve?  If yes, list them here.

• Be sure to note in the "problems" section below whether current company plans or actions are inconsistent with the mission or goals.

Step 2:  Analyze the company’s External Environment (i.e., the industry in which it competes—it’s opportunities and threats).

• Perform a 5-Forces analysis. Answer this question:  What does this tell you about the profitability of the average firm in the industry?

• Perform an External Environment Scan. From the case, list any and all pieces of information that fall into the following categories:

1. External technology issues

2. External political/legal/regulatory issues

3. External sociological/societal issues

4. External economic forces

• What does this tell you about outside forces and their potential to impact company operations?

Step 3:  Analyze the company’s Internal Environment (i.e., the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses).

• Perform a financial ratio analysis for the last 2 years worth of financial information. What does this tell you about the company’s ability to fund its competitive maneuvers?

• Perform a DuPont Analysis on the most recent year’s financial data.  What does this tell you about where the strengths/weaknesses are with the company’s internal financial management?

• Define the company’s core competencies.

• Using the core competencies, perform a VRIO analysis. Draw value chains as necessary.

• For each of the core competencies you listed above, does the VRIO analysis lead you to believe that any of them can be considered competitive advantages?

• For all the competitive advantages you identified in the above point, how many are sustainable?  Why?

Step 4:  Now that you have analyzed both internal and external elements, perform a SWOT analysis. What does this tell you about the company?

Step 5: Perform a Strategies Analysis

• Define which corporate-level strategy the company is attempting to follow. Your answer has to be either Growth, Stability, or Decline. Discuss your answer.

• Define the business-level strategies that are in use. For each of the main product lines mentioned in the case, define which generic strategy (e.g., cost leadership, differentiation, etc.) the company is attempting to follow. Is this strategy still appropriate given what you now know about the industry and the company?

Step 6:  Now that you’ve done all of the above, define what you see as the main company problems and/or strategic challenges.

• List these issues.  If there are many, it may be helpful to categorize these as being “Major Problems” and “Minor Problems”.

• Be aware that sometimes cases are written about very successful companies that will not showcase problems.

Step 7:  For each of the problems listed above, create an action plan for solving the challenge/problem.