The US Footwear Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The US Footwear Industry - Essay Example Comfort Shoes is trying to target health conscious customers of all ages and genders in order to develop a potential customer base. However, the organization is planning to implement an online business strategy in order to achieve potential competitive advantages. At the initial stage, it may face some difficulties in finding effective employees necessary for effective business operations. The case study will analyze the scenario and discuss the case problem to make the readers understand the purpose of the study. Overview/Analysis Several organizations are trying to capitalize on the potential business opportunities that are developed due to globalization and the technological revolution. Comfort Shoes is a newly developed organization. The organization is trying to implement advanced technology in its business processes in order to meet the satisfaction level of target customers. The online shopping facility can help the customers to reduce their consumption time. At the initial st age, it is quite hard for the organization to cope with the start-up challenges. It is not easy to grab the market share of existing leading organizations through this strategy. Comfort Shoes is trying to raise capital from venture investors through the help of their business plan. Setting up an effective and fast server for online marketing activities is quite important for an online retail organization. It is necessary for the organization to conduct an effective market survey in order to determine the growth of online retail marketing. The organization is planning to provide advertisements on several social media networking sites. It is another costly effort. On the other hand, several leading footwear organizations have adopted information technology in the business processes after achieving a significant growth rate and market share. Customer awareness is another key thing for the newly developed organization. It is only focusing on online activities rather than utilization of several kinds of promotional media. It is quite important for the organization to manage cost at the initial stage of the business process. In addition, the organization should think about the implementation of unique promotional strategies to attract target customers. Status Report The management of Comfort Shoes understood the risk of intense market competition and market saturation. They did some adjustments in their marketing strategies before the implementation of online marketing activities. The marketing managers of the organization suggested the managing director of the organization to organize an urgent meeting with the stakeholders regarding this issue. The marketing manager told that the organization should conduct a real-time primary market research to understand the market trend and customers. He proposed that some executives of the company should be assigned to conduct a market research activity through the sample survey method. A questionnaire should be distributed to the people of all ages. According to the instruction, the executives conducted a survey by distributing a prepared close-ended questionnaire (Appendix). After the completion of data collection, the organization reviewed the answers. 78% of total respondents shared that the organization should try to follow print media, digital media and online promotional strategies to enhance customer awareness. After getting the outcome, the stakeholders committed to help the organization for the promotional activities. Case Problem The managing director of Comfort Shoes was concerned before the sample survey process that the management team of the organization did not avail sufficient information to make a valid decision for the future business perspective. Demand for

Critically evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of expansion via Essay

Critically evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of expansion via organic growth versus expansion via acquisition. using real - Essay Example This global business related news is encouraging in the context of financial downturn of the year 2008, still casting its shadow on the global growth of large businesses. Luypaert & Huyghebaert (2007) attempt a statistical analysis of the expansion via acquisition strategy becoming a trend, as in 2005 only, 29,585 acquisitions got materialised. Companies prefer to grow and expand through acquisitions rather than organically because it is the quicker way of growth relatively to internal growth as the aimed company is well positioned with its production, distribution and customer base. It also minimises the risk of investing for the increasing growth of the company. Otherwise also, expansion via acquisition could prove to be cost-efficient way out relatively to organic growth, especially when the replacement cost of assets is higher than the concurrent worth of the aimed assets. Another benefit of the expansion via acquisition is that in comparison to organic growth, it can be acquired by paying through the stock as well. It can be a way-out for companies facing cash-crunch or for those companies already deficient in debt power. Literature reveals that during flourishing stock market behaviour, bidding companies prefer to pay for the acquisition through stock. Irrespective of this fact, expansion via organic growth and via acquisitions is mutually inclusive investment decision for a firm; it can be an added advantage to choose any of the expansion methods rather than selecting a single alternative. Before taking a decision to go either for internal expansion or expansion via acquisition, thorough research needs to be made to gather industry impact and aggregate market variables for opting out external expansion. There might be the possibility that firm size may artificially hold the impact of industry concentration whereas the market-to-book ratio may reveal the comfort of bidding firms to reward aimed shareholders with stock if stock markets are flourishing. Ind ustry features are crucial factors like the potential for economies of scale, industry concentration, sales growth and deregulation, and aggregate market variables, like historical volume of merger and acquisition, stock prices, GDP growth and the output spread (Luypaert & Huyghebaert, 2007). In a mutually inclusive relationship between internal growth and expansion via acquisition for making investment, a company may opt for growth via expansion additionally to organic or internal growth. Financially sound companies with enough investment possibilities would prefer to practice both options of growth for leveraging from competitive advantage as early as possible. In case, firms face cash crunch, they might prefer an alternative of the two. Strategies for both kinds of growth options need not to be necessarily related. Statistical research on the connection between external and internal growth is limited with complicated outcomes. Hay and Liu, as cited by Luypaert & Huyghebaert (2007 ) evaluate M&A in the UK across 1971–1989 and find that M&A and organic expansion are supportive to each other. On the opposite side, Dickerson et al., as cited by Luypaert & Huyghebaert (2007), employing data on UK listed companies in manufacturing during 1948–1970 and 1975–1990, note that the connection between organic growth and the possibility of expansion through acquisition is surely negative, which underscores that these growth strategies are to be used alternatively (Luypaert & Huygh