Assignment: Business Research for Decision Making

Comprehensive Analysis of a Fortune 500 Company

For this Individual Project you will analyze publicly available information about a Fortune 500 Company and develop an assessment of the corporate strategy and its ability to increase competitive advantage.

This assignment requires you to obtain and analyze information at the company, industry and market levels using various databases and reports found in the AIU library, such as Hoovers and Dun & Bradstreet, in addition to at least eight (8) professional or academic peer -reviewed articles.

Your analysis should include an in-depth review of the Company's most recent SEC Form-10k Annual Report and Form DEF-14A Proxy Statement. These SEC filings can be found at the SEC Edgar Database located at the URL http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html . Pay particular attention to the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) sections of the SEC Form 10-K and the DEF-14A Proxy statement. Direct competitors are identified in the "Comparator Group" section of the DEF-14A Proxy Statement. ) These SEC filings also contain information relative to external and industry analysis that will be helpful in your assessment of the Company's strategy and competitive position.

A thorough analysis requires evaluation of various external stakeholders:

• Competitors
• Industry
• Vendors
• Customers
• Governmental entities
• Communities

Internal stakeholders that should be considered in the analysis include:

• Shareholders
• Board of Directors
• Management
• Employees

A comprehensive SWOT analysis should be performed relative to the Company's ability to improve its competitive advantage.

The comprehensive analysis should include both qualitative and quantitative elements, leveraging information available in SEC Filings, business databases, and peer-reviewed articles.

Your work should demonstrate your ability to:

• Apply critical thinking skills to analyze business situations.
• Apply principles of quantitative and qualitative research to business cases.
• Describe the opportunities provided by technology for businesses.
• Appropriately use effective communication techniques.
• Apply the standard of APA style to all research and writing tasks.

You will prepare a report presenting the findings of your comprehensive analysis examining the Company's corporate strategy and its ability to increase competitive advantage. The written report will have a body length of 10-12 pages excluding title, abstract, references and appendices. Quotation limits should be Not more than 10% of the body of the paper can be quotations, all of which must be properly attributed in APA format.

NOTE: Article collections (scholarly databases) may be accessed in the Library. Suggestions are:

• ABI Inform Global
• Academic Search Premier
• Business Source Premier

10-12 pages (body of paper, excluding title page, abstract, references and appendices, if any).