Question: Finding a Strategy for a Restaurant
Break up into groups of three to five people and discuss the following scenario. You are a group of partners contemplating opening a new restaurant in your city. You are trying to decide how to position your restaurant to give it the best competitive advantage.
1. Create a strategic-group map of the restaurants in your city by analyzing their generic business models and strategies. What are the similarities or differences between these groups?
2. Identify which restaurants you think are the most profitable and why.
3. On the basis of this analysis, decide what kind of restaurant you want to open and why.
Article File 5
Find an example (or several examples) of a company pursuing one of the generic business models. What set of business-level strategies does the company use to formulate and implement its business model? How successful has the company been?
Strategic Management Project: Module 5
This part of the project focuses on the nature of your company's business model and business-level strategies. If your company operates in more than one business, concentrate on either its core, or most central or most important, businesses. Using all the information you have collected on your company so far, answer the following questions:
1. How differentiated are the products or services of your company? What is the basis of their differentiated appeal?
2. What is your company's strategy toward market segmentation? If it segments its market, on what basis does it do so?
3. What distinctive competencies does your company have? (Use the information on functional-level strategy in the previous chapter to answer this question.) Is efficiency, quality, innovation, responsiveness to customers, or a combination of these factors the main driving force in your company?
4. What generic business model is your company pursuing? How has it formulated and implemented a set of business-level strategies to pursue this business model?
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with your company's choice of business model and strategies?
6. Is your company a member of a strategic group in an industry? If so, which one?
7. How could you improve your company's business model and strategies to strengthen its competitive advantage?