Description of Task 

You are required to write a report with reference to at least 10 separate scholarly journal articles and your subject core text. This report will include the following headings: 

1) Corporation Identification 

a. Identify an organisation with product or service portfolios that span multiple business units. 

   i. In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the term “corporation”. 

  ii. In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the terms “product portfolio” and “service portfolio”. 

2) Corporate Research 

a. Business Unit Identification. 

 i. Identify the separate business units within the corporation. 

 In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the term “Business Unit”. 

b. Identification of Product and Service Lines. 

   i. Identify the separate product and service lines of the corporation. 

   In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the terms “product lines” and “service lines”. 

3) Corporation Revenue Centres 

a. Identification of Revenue Centres. 

  i. Identify which product and service lines are creating the greatest revenues for the corporation. 

   In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the term “revenue”. 

4) External Environment Analysis 

a. Identify the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal operating environments for each business unit. 

   i. In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the terms Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal. 

  Provide a definition of the term “operating environment”. 

5) Source of Sustainable Competitive Advantage 

  a. Identify the source of sustainable competitive advantage for each business unit. 

   In your discussion define, with reference to scholarly articles, the four factors of sustainable competitive advantage. 

  In your answer, you should include core competencies and the concept of sustainable competitive advantage.

Four Criteria Analysis Example: 

1Subway sells healthy food – McDonald’s doesn’t. 

That is Subway’s core competence – or competitive advantage which is:

Valuable - because it enables Subway to exploit the opportunities in the external environment (societal attitudes towards healthy options being increasingly popular).

Rare - Subway is pursuing a differentiated business-level strategy by serving healthy foods as a fast-food franchise -- the other fast food outlets (biggest competitors) generally offer a much smaller number of healthy alternatives (if any at all) – this is not their core business.

Non-substitutable – customers value healthy food more and more and there is no strategic equivalent to this type of food.

Costly-to-imitate - McDonald’s competes based on price (tries to cut costs by preparing frozen rather than fresh food), so if McDonald’s attempts to replicate Subway’s healthy food strategy, that will directly influence their cost of production of food, and likely cause them to lose their cost leadership advantage. So, Subway’s strategy would be very costly to imitate for McDonald’s, as they would need to completely change their brand identity and menu on a global scale. 

Another example for Point 5:-

Component 5 of your Individual Assignment (again)

Woolworths and Coles - Both supermarket retailers are highly successful, suggesting that their strategies are valuable (since they have led to such success), however, their resources and capabilities are equally matched leading to similar strategies in terms of marketing, logistics and staffing -- meaning they are not non-substitutable or rare – they are possessed by both companies; and the two retail stores are fast to imitate elements of the other supermarket’s strategy, suggesting this is not a costly process. This implies that that neither Woolworths or Coles have any core competencies. 

And why is this again? --- Although their resources and capabilities are all valuable, they are not rare, costly to imitate or non-substitutable, which is the reason why these two companies don’t have a competitive advantage over one another.

6) Business Level Strategy 

a. Identifies the business level strategies used by business units within the corporation and make recommendations for the future strategic direction of these business units. 

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