Strategic Group Analysis

Strategic Group Analysis looks at players’ positions in the competitive environment and the underlying factors that determine a company’s profitability, as well as the competitive dynamics of an industry.

Structure – Conduct – Performance

Structure – Conduct – Performance is a framework used for industry situation analysis that provides a complete understanding of current industry structure, players, conduct and their competitive performance over time.

Players Analysis

An analysis of an industry’s players provides an overview of the current and potential competitors’ positions and directions with respect to strategy, objectives, capabilities, and/or other relevant dimensions.

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a method of looking towards the future with respect to all possible future worlds.

Decision Tree Analysis

A useful construct for visualizing a firm’s business decision and setting out all logical possibilities associated with it.

Strategy Methodology

A graphical look at the terminology and pathways involved with crafting a business unit strategy.

Issue Analysis and Hypothesis Generation

Issue analysis entails defining the situation, complication, and overriding question of a business case, and from that identifying issues to be addressed, formulating hypotheses for those issues and deriving a project plan.

Industry Characteristics

A graphic illustrating a logical progression of issues to consider in analyzing industries.

Size and Growth of a Market

The assessment of market size can then lead to many other critical analyses such as segmentation analysis or penetration analysis and the subsequent determination of market attractiveness.

Arenas of Competition

Competitive arenas are groups of market players that apply similar strategic, operational and marketing tools and compete on the basis of similar competitive advantages. Four types of arenas of competition are generally recognizable, each characterized by a different competitive advantage.

Analyzing a Company

Considering characteristics and dynamics of individual companies.

Value Chain Analysis

Value chain analysis is a tool for examining a company’s value-adding activities by desegregating the company into strategically important (discrete) activities.

Porter 5 Forces Framework Worksheet

Porter five forces analysis is a framework for industry analysis and business strategy development. It draws upon industrial organization (IO) economics to derive five forces that determine the competitive intensity and therefore attractiveness of a market.

Business Diamond

How to think about organizational components.

4 Types of Competitive Strategy

A look at the four broad categories of competitive strategies, two with threatening moves (offensive and defensive strategies) and two with non-threatening moves (collusive strategies and strategic alliances).

Value Chain

There are several analytic tools for assessing the resources and capabilities of firms. One tool is the value chain. The utility of the value chain can only be appreciated in actual application, not in the abstract. While the generic concept is simple, real-life value chain analysis can be very difficult and challenging. It can be very useful and revealing, too.