Exam 2: Analyzing the External Environment of the Firm: Creating Competitive Advantages

Doctors and other health professionals say it is becoming harder to stay on the right side of the rules as billing requirements grow more convoluted. This is an example of which segment of the general environment?

Scenario analysis is a form of environmental forecasting.

Environmental monitoring is not an input to forecasting.

Taking advantage of the increasing penetration of personal computers in American homes, the Mayo Clinic transformed itself as a provider of health-related knowledge and expertise. It took advantage of the ______ trends of the _______ in the prices of PCs and the ____________ presence of PCs in virtually every home in the United States.

Firms that were successful in the past can fail today because

Crowdsourcing is used by companies to develop products.

The bargaining power of the buyer is greater than that of the supplier when

The strengths and weaknesses of a SWOT analysis refer to the external conditions of the firm.

Blockbuster, Borders, Circuit City, and Radio Shack are examples of firms that did not have good perceptual acuity.

In the Five-Forces model, conditions under which a supplier group can be powerful include all of the following except

Why must successful managers recognize opportunities and threats in their company external environment?

Strategic groups consist of firms that are more _____ to each other than firms that are not.

Nintendo built a security chip into its game console hardware and then licensed the right to develop games to outside firms. These firms paid a royalty to Nintendo for each copy of the game sold. This is an example of Nintendo using _________ products.

SWOT analysis is a framework for analyzing the internal and external environment of a company. It consists of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. According to a SWOT analysis, which of the following is not an aspect that the strategy of the firm must follow?

Complement products typically have no impact on the value of products and services of the firm.

The competitive environment consists of many factors that are particularly relevant to company strategy. This includes competitors, customers, and suppliers.

A CEO meets four times a year with about four other CEOS of large, but noncompeting, diverse global companies. This is an example of how to improve perceptual acuity.

In some industries, high switching costs can act as an important barrier to entry.

Even with all of the advances in recent years, forecasting is typically considered more of an art than a science and it is of little use in generating accurate predictions.

Steve Jobs, former chairman of Apple, demonstrated that ___________ also are important in forecasting.