Posted: September 16th, 2017

Assessment Title: Managing a value chain

Assessment Title: Managing a value chain

Selected Company: Apple
Industry: Mobile Technology
Companies competing in the industry: Apple, Samsung and LG

Assessment Description
Length: 2800 words

“Competitive advantage for a company means not just matching or surpassing what competitors can do, but discovering what customers want and then profitably satisfying, and even exceeding, their expectations. As barriers to interregional and international trade have diminished and as access to goods and services has grown, customers can locate and acquire the best of what they want, at an acceptable price, wherever it is in the world. Under growing competition and, hence, rising customer expectations, a company’s penalty for complacency becomes even greater.
A strategic tool to measure the importance of the customer’s perceived value is value chain analysis. By enabling companies to determine the strategic advantages and disadvantages of their activities and value-creating processes in the marketplace, value chain analysis becomes essential for assessing competitive advantage.”

-Institute of Management Accountants, Practice of Management Accounting,
(http://www.imanet.org/PDFs/Public/Research/SMA/Value%20Chain%20Analysis.pdf)

Instructions
You required preparing a report analyzing a selected industry value chain and a group of key companies within that industry.
Your report will identify the key value chain elements of the industry and by analysis demonstrate how each company uses these elements to create value and create and maintain sustainable competitive advantage.

The report should present information and analysis on the following topics.

1. General information
• Describe, in brief, the characteristics of the nominated industry and the histories of all three companies within the same industry.
• Determine the key strategic differences that have impacted on the relative success of the companies. Provide two (2) Examples of such strategic differences to support your analysis.

2. Value Chain Analysis (focus on this section)
Using your understanding of how each company has directed their strategic planning to compete in different ways, identify where in the value chain each company has chosen to differentiate itself from its competitors. You may find the following headings useful in framing your analysis.
• Market opportunity analysis – Analysis of industry value drivers, resource implications and organizational alternatives
• Demand chain analysis – Customer value model (value drivers), value driver analysis, value proposition
• Supply chain analysis – Value production and coordination, value delivery and value servicing

3. Summary Analysis
A concluding analysis of how the three different companies have created value in different ways to deliver their individual competitive advantages.

*Harvard Referencing system is required