Developing Winning Competitive Strategies - Essay Example

Strategic Plan Introduction With its headquarters in Taiwan, the company started five years ago. It has regional sales offices in other parts of the world that include: Brazil, Singapore, Toronto, Milan and Italy for handling sales promotions on behalf of the company in their respective geographical areas. A digital camera company's operations have been taken over by managers. The company competes neck and neck against other digital camera firms for global market leadership. Although digital camera market share varies with the company, currently the digital camera companies have equal market share world wide. At the moment, our company has a sale of 800,000 and 200,000 entry level cameras and multi-featured cameras annually respectively. In year 2005, the company's performance was excellent since they generated revenue of $206 million with net earnings of $20 million which translate to $2.00 per common stock share. The digital camera users have appreciated our company's products and for this case, they have developed as substantial world wide market share. Although the performance of the company has been positive over the years, the company has some strength that have facilitated the performance and some weaknesses that have been pulling them down. Our company emphasis on the market share in all continents although we failed to achieve a substantial market share in United States and Asia since the amount of profit per share we were making was at minimal. We had a notion that the price of our products would assist as gain a substantial market share and for this case, we overlooked investing in the marketing department even though we had invested heavily on in the market share. Our Strengths Our main marketing strategy was our image rating as we believed that this would eventually as it expressed the quality of our product since it attracted more customers to purchase our products. Our sales increased gradually since our customers believed that our quality of the products were high as the quality of the product goes with the image rating as it was our case. For this case, our company's products have increased in the market share and sales increased due to perception our customer had that image rating goes with the quality of the product. This was a strength that brought our company this far against our competitors. Another strength that has assisted our company gain a substantial market share is advertising. People has to be made aware of a product for them to be purchased and it does not if the quality of a product is high, if people do not know of its existence, then a low quality may have a large market share since people of its existence. Our company invested heavily on advertisement as they always exceeded their advertisement budget of $300 to an actual spending of $537 in advertising. Another strength that assisted out company succeed against its competitors is the market share. We started from the beginning to market out products in all the continents in the world in order to increase our sales revenue. This strength really helped as since we increased our sales and eventually our profits went up as our products were made known throughout the world. Our Weaknesses We lowest product went for as low as $300 against our competitor lowest product that went for $345. We though if our product's prices were low, we would have high stock turnover since we would sell large number of products thereby increasing our sales. This was not the case as our prices were far too low to make a substantial profit that would outstand that of our competitors. Even though our market share was high, we failed to generate enough profit out of our multi-featured camera which we offered at $300 against our competitor's price of $345 on the same product. Another weakness experienced by our company is on salaries. We thought that if we paid high salaries to our employees, we would motivate the more thereby increasing our efficiency due to increased productivity. However, we there was no room for increasing productivity as a result of working harder due to incentive motivation. This was a wrong strategy and later on we lowered our salaries and incentive as we had to have a drastic change in the workforce. We eventually retrenched some employees to cut cost of high salaries and incentives in order for the company to at least make some profit. Our company was running without any strategic plans and this was the worst mistake a company would do since it seems it does not have a mission or a vision. A company on its formation, it should have a plan or come up with the main objective of its existence in the first place. The company had no organizational structure and for this case, it made it difficult in delegation of authority. A strategic plan has to be laid down and a well laid down organizational structure is also necessary to rescue the company from this mess of not knowing who is who and where the company is heading to in terms of growth. Another weakness our company has been experiencing is allocating very low amount for research and development section. For a company to succeed, it must do a feasibility study on the market on what kind of a product the customers want, their tastes and preference and geographical and demographical trend. This would give the company an informed decision on what kind of a product they are supposed to produce for their customers in order to gain a substantial market share. There is also a need to perform feasibility study to know what king of product our competitors are producing in order for us to know how we can be able to improve ours also in order to increase our market share. Redesigning of a product is also a marketing strategic plan since the product would have new look and would even attract more and more products. For this case, our company has been overlooking this strategy since they never improved their product's quality. Conclusion It is important for any given company to have a strategic plan in order for it to achieve its organizational goals. Our company failed to achieve it organizational objectives despite it having a sound foundation with achievable dreams due to lack of a strategic plan on the way forward. It was a learning experience for the company as it learnt from its own mistake and this lesson will ensure that the company lays down it strategic plan and have a strong organizational structure. The company can still achieve its organizational objective if its managers' drafts and implement a strategic plan. References Thompson, A.A, Stappenbeck, G.J. and Reidenbach, M.A (2006): Glo-Bus - Developing Winning Competitive Strategies, Accessed on December 16, 2006 from http://www.glo-bus.com/users/CorporateLobby.html Read More