For This Case Study

Write a 3 to 5 page paper (750 to 1200 words, not including the cover page and reference page) in APA format in response to the prompts below. Please click hereto view the criteria by which you will be assessed for the achievement of the CLO for this unit. Please use this APA Sample provided in Unit 1 to complete your assignment. In this unit, you will also be assessed on the Institutional Learning Outcome of Written Communication. You need to integrate your thoughts about the assignment into one long essay that is well-organized and cohesive.

For this case study you may select a company of your own choosing from the pharmaceutical or textile industries. You may use this company for several exercises during the course if you so choose. Conduct additional research in the LIRN so that you have a total of 2 references. Respond to the following questions:

a.    Examine the corporate Web site for your selected company and determine if the strategies pursued by this firm were emergent, deliberate, or both emergent and deliberate. Justify your answer with facts from the Web site.

b.   Perform a five forces analysis on your selected industry (Figure 2.3 Page 34).

c.   Explain how you would use the VRIO framework to construct the cash-flow analysis that is a part of any present-value calculation.

Figure: 2.3

A Model of Environmental Threats As a theoretical framework, the S-C-P model has proven to be very useful in informing both research and government policy. However, the model can sometimes be awkward to use to identify threats in a firm’s local environment. Fortunately, several scholars have developed models of environmental threats based on the S-C-P model that are highly applicable in identifying threats facing a particular firm.8 These models identify the five most common threats, presented in Figure 2.3, faced by firms in their local competitive environments and the conditions under which these threats are more or less likely to be present. The relationship between the S-C-P model and the framework presented in Figure 2.3 is discussed in the Strategy in Depth feature. Figure 2.3 Environmental Threats and the Profit Potential of Industries To a firm seeking competitive advantages, an environmental threat is any individual, group, or organization outside a firm that seeks to reduce the level of that firm’s performance. Threats increase a firm’s costs, decrease a firm’s revenues, or in other ways reduce a firm’s performance. In S-C-P terms, environmental threats are forces that tend to increase the competitiveness of an industry and force firm performance to competitive parity level.

The five common environmental threats identified in the literature are:

(1) threat from new competition,

(2) threat from competition among existing competitors,

(3) threat from superior or low-cost substitutes,

(4) threat of supplier leverage, and

(5) threats from buyers’ influence.

Solution Preview

Under Armour is an American based company which manufactures footwear and casual apparels. The firms headquarter is located in Baltimore, Maryland with additional offices in South America and Asia. Many of the fabrics used by the company in its products are technical textile products which are…

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