Assignment : New Business, Porters Forces, And Generic Business Strategy

For Assignment 1, select a retail business that you wish to start, from the list of businesses identified below. You must select one of these businesses and the business must sell products, not services, for this assignment. The businesses from which you may choose are:

- A gourmet candy business

Name of the candy business: Cindy's Candy Corner

Those are the only new business choices from which you may select (select only one).

You will work on this project most of this semester. There is some background information about your business, below, and then some required deliverables for Assignment 1.

Background Information

You have come across sufficient money to turn an interest of yours into a viable business, with both a very small storefront as well as with a robust e-commerce website. You believe you have enough funds to launch the business but before doing anything else. There are 4 partsto Assignment 1:

1. Decide what business you want to open. It should be selected from the list of businesses, above. You will use Power Point for this assignment, so in a couple of PowerPoint slides, tell me a bit about the business and the product(s) you plan to sell. Do not be overly wordy - give me a "60-second elevator pitch" of what you plan to do. Note: you are just planning at this point.

2. Analyze and create a Porter's Five Forces Model on your business, using the Detroit metropolitan area as your environment. The Porter's Five Forces Model should be created so that all 5 of Porter's forces are discussed in light of your choice of business (i.e., discuss buyer power in the metro Detroit area and what it means to your business, and finishing up by telling how each "power" ranks for this business (i.e., high? And so on).

3. Next, using Michael Porter again, choose a business focus (these are Porter's 3 generic business strategies). Which will your products/business align with and why?

4. CRM Capabilities. List 4 capabilities / techniques on how your customers could reach you. Provide a description and comparison of each. Explain why one might be better for you than another.

5. Create a logo. Create a logo for your business.

Remember! Though your business has a storefront, it will also have an e-commerce site, which will play heavily in assignment 2 & 3 - so keep that in mind as you are working.