Strozier Sensors Incorporated (SSI), a multimillion-dollar company established in 2016 because of the government splitting a monopoly company into six identical competitors. As a way to differentiate itself from the other companies, SSI developed a Niche Differentiator business strategy with a focus on the High Technology customers (Foundation Online Guide, n.d.). This purpose of this business strategy is to help SSI gain a competitive advantage. The high technology products will be created with easy accessibility, excellent design, and high awareness. SSI core business units consisted of Research & Development (R&D), Marketing, Production, Human Resources (HR), and Finance. R&D is mainly responsible for making product improvements and creating new products that will meet the needs of our high technology customers concerning age, price, size, and performance. The Marking team is responsible for the proper sales forecast, pricing the products at a premium cost, and spend top dollars in sales and promote to aid in making sure our customers are familiar with our product. The Production team is responsible for scheduling the production of inventory based on the marketing forecast and making sure capacity if available to meet the demand without overtime. The Human Resource team works to make sure production has the proper complement. The caliber of employee is based on the amount of money spent for recruiting and training. The Finance team managers the cash flow from
We evaluated our company’s position in the industry, and found ourselves in an excellent starting position to further develop our products and match them to the industry’s needs. Our market share is adequate and we can advance further with our strategy improve and reposition our products in the coming years. We have underutilized capacity, which we intend to improve, while increasing automation to reduce costs. We have plans to improve our promotion to improve product awareness and with the appropriate product lines we will increase price to improve margins and better align our high-end product image. Our current financial position is optimistic, showing our leverage (Assets/Equity) at 2.0, when our goal is to maintain 1.5-2.0 overall. By utilizing the analysis tools we are learning what elements are driving demand, how to effectively tailor our products through R&D, how best to adjust our marketing and pricing, while lowering input costs, in order to improve margins and to ensure our stakeholders are all satisfied.
The key determinant of Chester’s’ success was the management commitment to superior business processes. Chester has a state of the art facility. Management increased capacity in the years after the government split and will continue to add capacity as growth dictates. However, capacity will be expanded at a lower rate than previously, in an attempt to avoid cash flow shortages seen in prior years. Chester has enhanced automation and quality processes in order to gain production efficiencies and cost savings. Chester has invested in labor recruiting and training; developing core competencies in it’s’ workforce. The firm has and will continue to maintain investment in research and development, as product improvements will continue to be demanded by the customers. The other key factor of the corporation’s success was the superior growth of the industry. It would have been much more difficult to sustain profitable growth in this extremely competitive market without the superior volume growth of the sensor industry.
In the marketing section, Andrew being a differentiator would want to concentrate in manufacturing a technologically advanced product with a slightly higher focus in the high-tech niche market. It is also essential for Andrew to have an accurate sales forecast. This is because manufacturing too many sensor units results in extra time and material costs being incurred. On the other hand, manufacturing too few or little sensor units would lead to stock outs and loss sales which can be even more costly. Prepare for the sales forecast by looking at industry demand for the next round, the number of products in the particular segment, comparing with other company’s products based on their accessibility and awareness and whether the products (sensor)
The initial strategy was to maintain a competitive presence in each segment by keeping our prices aligned with the average for each target market, while maintaining costs low. Specifically, it was our goal to become the leader in Traditional and low-end segments of the sensor business by allocating significant resources to R&D, marketing and promotions for these products. Our differentiator would be the result of a high investment in R&D to ensure our products were the best available.
Chester chose to enter the sensor industry in 2016 as the niche cost leader. Our mission is to providing trustworthy products to our customer base. Our goal is to offer these products at a cutting edge price, with low overhead, at a high volume. By focusing on the Traditional and Low End segment of the market, Chester’s ability to achieve our mission made it possible to gain market share. Many aspects went into the logistics of the supply chain in order to carry out our operation. While the cost leader strategy is not always an opportune circumstance for the traditional segment, it allows us to offer lower prices to entice customers to purchase our products over other companies in the industry.
Similarly, buyers in the Performance and High End segments feel that performance and size are also important but the product’s reliability is most important to them. We chose to operate in these growing markets because neither segment is price sensitive and they are more concerned with overall quality and innovation which is our company’s underlying focus. Our objectives will be achieved by relying heavily on our sales and promotions team as well as increasing our spending in research and development to ensure the best, most up-to-date products for our customers. Brand awareness and accessibility is vital to our company because we are now competing against four other competitors in the same industry and customers need to be able to quickly recognize our brand of sensors.
During the course of the simulation, my team’s strategy was to adopt and stick to the Niche Differentiator strategy. To accomplish our mission, we focused on high end, performance and size sensors and hoped to seize a dominant presence in the industry. This approach allowed us to reduce prices in low end and traditional while positioning to better take over High End and Performance industry segments.
The following paper is about a company that is at the top level of their industry in selling their products and services. The background of this company describes about what kind of company this is and the types of products and services it provides to their customers. This section also includes the recent performance of this company and the varying aspects of what their target customers and whose is the competition.
The Andrews management team has opted to pursue the strategy of differentiator with a product life cycle focus. This strategy involves the creation of products with excellent design in terms of size and performance (on the perceptual map), and MTBF. Significant investment in awareness and accessibility, and development of proficiency in the research and development sector is also central to this business strategy. In order to compensate for these high initial investments, our product prices will be relatively high; however it is believed that our customers will be drawn to our product due to high awareness and due to the superior quality of our sensors. Our released products will need to be manipulated according to the changes in expectations of the marketplace by producing smaller and faster products, according to the expected ideal size and performance of the sensors in future years. In addition, our company must invest in other important activities such as; total quality management (TQM), marketing, and human resources (HR) in order to
F. Alternatives: Two major proposed solutions were described in the case. First option is to acquire monitoRobotics and offer instant service with the existing and new products. The second option is to eliminate the service industry from the company as a whole. Nikolas argues that this would hurt the company’s reputation in brand image Paragon Tool’s has created. He recommends acquiring MonitoRobotics as soon as possible due to close competitions acquiring about the same company. A third solution can also be just leaving everything the same and running the company as it is currently.
Best Buy Co., Inc. is currently the world’s largest retailer for consumer electronics. The company has 1,400 brick and mortar stores and is a popular online retailer as well. The stores serve as display room for various online retailers. Best Buy consumers can purchase electronic products such as mobile, corded and cordless phones, televisions, cameras, personal computers, laptops, appliances and more (David & F.R., 2015). Today’s society relies on convenience and technology, forcing companies to implement new ideas and projects in an effort to maintain their ability to compete with other companies. For continued success the company must look at the internal and external issues the company may face as well as their competitors and their best practices that are contributing to their success.
Product Innovation – Innovation of new products had failed many times and MTI has lost reputation with Wall Street. This process had been placed on the backburner and when the CEO came on board there were only six products in the pipeline. Therefore, to be successful in the future, MTI needs to invest more in R&D and focus on delivering new products.
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Brazilian multinational corporation, Metalfrio Solutions S.A., is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of plug-in commercial refrigeration equipment. They seek differentiation through innovation and customer relationships, through their brands of Metalfrio, Derby, Caravell and Klimasan, to meet the different needs of their customers (“Metalfrio”). In addition, Metalfrio goes beyond just their point of sales, as they include services along with their products, adding value and uniqueness to the company. However, it has taken many years to get to where they are now.
Through GEARS, Solectron was able to organize the whole company into business units that focused on different aspects of the business ' Technology Solutions, Global Manufacturing, Global Services, and Global Materials Services. OEMs were able to outsource more of their functions to Solectron, which in turn allowed Solectron to become involved in customers’ product designs, parts procurement, assembling and testing. This freed up the customers to focus on core competencies, such as research, marketing and sales.