Exam 1: What Is Strategy and Why Is It Important

What is the foremost question in running a business enterprise?

Overdrive Motors, a manufacturer of self-driving delivery trucks, is working on developing its next-generation vehicles. It has decided on a strategy of focusing on a narrow buyer segment and outcompeting rivals by offering buyers customized vehicles at a lower cost than rivals. What basic strategic approach has Overdrive Motors decided upon?

Should a company's strategy be tightly connected to its quest for competitive advantage? Why or why not? What difference does it make whether a company has a sustainable competitive advantage or not?

FaberRoad, a respected courier brand, is fast losing its market share to competitors who do overnight deliveries of packages or offer lower prices. The company's research department has found that many customers care more about knowing exactly when a package will arrive than getting it the next day. Which strategy would best address the current state of FaberRoad and help it regain its market?

What are the three tests of a winning strategy?

A well-established brewery offers lower-priced beer to powerful supermarket buyers at widespread locations and has loyal distributors that supply mass goods to supermarket retailers. With fewer ways to achieve differentiation in the market, most new microbrewery entrants offer similar products but lack sufficient funding to compete against the well-established brewery. Which strategy could new microbrewers employ? Explain your answer.

Management's blueprint for how and why the company's business approaches will generate revenues sufficient to cover costs and produce attractive profits and returns on investment

A winning strategy is one that

A company's strategy is NOT concerned with management's choices about how to

Giving customers more value for the money by satisfying their expectations on key quality features, performance, and/or service attributes while beating their price expectations is a

Which of the following firms uses an emergent strategy?

Every strategy needs

Which one of the following does NOT account for WHY a company's strategy evolves from one version to another?

Strategy is about competing differently than rivals, thus strategy success is about

Describe two aspects of a company's business model.

A new entrant in a market dominated by established players introduces itself with copycat products of another competitor. Would this strategy work in the long term for the firm? Justify your answer.

__________ is the set of actions that its managers take to outperform the company's competitors and achieve superior profitability.

A pharmaceutical giant acquires a manufacturer of rare specialty drugs to improve its falling share prices and invests all its wealth into the deal. Due to a deficit, it agrees to do a joint venture for the acquisition and involves a major automobile giant to fund the deal. After a rocky start, the companies now have a strong market position and generate good profits. Which of the following regarding the company's strategy is true?

Why is it appropriate to argue that good strategy-making combined with good strategy execution are valid signs of good management?

What are the three questions that managers can use to distinguish a winning strategy from a so-so or flawed strategy? Briefly explain why each question is important.