Analysis

The industry to be analyzed must correspond to one of the following industry categories but under no circumstances are you permitted to do this exercise on the industry of which the company in your group case is a part.

INDUSTRY                                                        SOME INDUSTRY COMPANIES - EXAMPLES ONLY
The leisure-cruise industry                              Carnival plc, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian cruise lines
The internet sales industry                              Amazon, E-Bay, Priceline, Angie's list, Alibaba
Consumer technology industry                        Apple Inc, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Samsung
The automobile manufacturing industry           GM, Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Fiat-Chrysler, BMW

The paper should be structured using each of the six forces as a title Rate each of the forces as high, medium or low and explain the reason you think so. Do not quantify the ratings.

Use section headings for each of the forces and show the ratings within these headings. Rely on the terminology and concepts in the text bullet points, relevant to your industry to justify each rating.

Back up your rate with industry research. Build on the evidence and eliminate unfounded speculation and opinion. The textbook offers some useful suggestions under industry information starting at the bottom of page 377. Your work is expected to be analytical, not merely descriptive.

Be concise and get to the point. Do not pad or be so brief as to make the work unintelligible.

Use the Porter's forces blank grading sheet (course information handout number 5.1) to guide you.

This is not a report on an individual company but must reflect an industry as a whole. Use a variety of companies by way of example only. Focusing on a single company is a significant error.