Adidas's Strategy and Competitive Advantage (Disadvantage)

  1. Introduction: The introduction is supposed to give an overview of what this paper is about, how it is structured. Please provide a brief historical background of the company you study. Further, the introduction should tell the reader what the overall contribution of your paper is. What is it that you show/ explain?   The main point that this paper will cover is Industry Analysis, Position, Activity choices and Activity System, Competitive Advantage/disadvantage analysis and discussion, and Conclusion Additional comments: Figures, Tables, Exhibits. 2. Industry Analysis: It is necessary that you explain how you define the industry (and why). That includes setting the boundaries (what is included) as well as defining specific terms and abbreviations. In addition to that, using Porter’s five forces, it is important to evaluate each force from an average within industry-standpoint, NOT through the eyes of your focal firm. For example, if the industry exhibits strong supplier power but your focal company has backward integrated to circumvent this problem, the conclusion is not that supplier power is low in this industry. Instead, your company’s decision to backward integrate is part of the activity system analysis and should therefore refer to the industry dynamics as a rationale of this particular activity choice. That is, please don’t mix industry analysis (which is about the five forces from a general within-industry standpoint) and strategic analysis of your company (which is about the activity choices made, e.g., in order to deal with unattractive forces of the industry). 3. Positioning: This chapter is supposed to discuss useful dimensions to describe and analyze the competitive landscape (e.g., cost and WTP, or whatever you find useful to distinguish different positioning themes – but please explain why you choose these dimensions). A visualization as a 2x2 matrix is particularly useful to visualize the strategic positioning. Here you should also discuss the most important (closest) competitors and their respective positioning. In this chapter you are NOT supposed to discuss the performance or provide the reader with a list of events or decisions taken during this time period. Papers often lose focus in this particular chapter and steal the thunder of the activity and performance section. 4. Activity choices and Activity System (+ visualize the activity map!): In this section, you need to introduce and explain the different activity choices that the firm has put in place to (try to) carry out its positioning (that you explained briefly in the prior section). Make sure the activity choices are properly explained and not too abstract. Here you need to be specific. How are these decisions different from competitors (why are competitors not doing them)? Further, this requires that you clearly define what’s core themes (positioning themes, which we visualize as big circles in the map) and what are the reinforcing activity choices that carry out the core-themes. Therefore it is necessary to understand that core-themes are often close to the positioning and offering of the firm. Core-themes should also bear a meaning that is rather content and industry specific. Core-themes should reflect the positioning and value proposition of your firm and therefore be specific in their names, e.g., “High quality burger-chain” (specific) vs. “High Quality” (too vague) or “Wide movie selection” vs. “Good product mix” etc…. MGMT-450 Strategy & Competitive Advantage Group Project Guidelines Daniel Albert 2 Second, interdependencies (i.e., complementarity) among elements need to be explained in the text. You don’t have to discuss all interdependencies, but you need to discuss some of the main ones. Discuss the resulting fit or misfit following this discussion. Why are they reinforcing? This section needs to lead to a visualization of the activity map (as a separate figure). 5. Competitive Advantage/disadvantage analysis and discussion: Here you are supposed to relate the insights from the discussion of the previous sections to explain whether the firm currently has a competitive advantage or disadvantage. Please provide carefully selected data to support your arguments. Can you link the arguments and data to our competitive advantage definition of WTP/Cost of your company versus competitors? Please discuss the sustainability of the advantage/disadvantage. 6. Conclusion Additional comments: Figures, Tables, Exhibits: Please include only figures that you refer to in the text and that you can explain. Also try to design figures and tables in such a way that the reader can easily get familiar with the content. Make sure that these figures have a consecutive number and a heading. Moreover, check for print-quality and whether all diagrams have names at the axes etc. Own created figures/tables (from compiling and analyzed data) are always better than a graph/table copied and pasted from another report. Diversity of sources used: Please make sure that you do not rely on only one or a few sources. Draw from a rich diversity of sources such as 10K, annual reports, press clippings, media coverage, case studies, company history books etc. A concentrated selection of sources will bias you in your understanding of the firm. You need multiple points of view. Proper citation and quotation: Please make sure to adequately reference and quote sources you build upon, use to build your arguments, and reuse. Citing is acknowledging others' work and an absolute necessary condition for excellent academic work. Further, providing the evidence of where your arguments come from or are supported by gives your work additional credibility. Deliberate plagiarism will result in an automatic fail.