D2

Strategy

Each week, you will be asked to respond to the prompt or prompts in the discussion forum. Your initial post should be 75-150 words in length, and is due on Sunday. By Tuesday, you should respond to two additional posts from your peers.

This week you’re exploring planning, strategy, and decision-making.  You’ll look at several areas of the strategic decision-making process. Strategic goals and decision-making isn’t easy.  Sometimes organizations put together a stellar strategic goal and vision for the future but make poor decisions in the short run that don’t support the long-term strategy. On the other hand, some organizations get it right and set clear, precise strategic goals and implement a successful decision-making strategy that supports them along the way.

Do some online research on the company you chose or any other company you’d like. Find a news article or video, dated within the last four weeks, that demonstrates an exceptionally good or exceptionally poor organizational strategy. Briefly summarize the source you chose, describe the organization’s strategy, what went well or what went wrong, then what you would have done if you were the leader of that organization.

Review a minimum of two of your classmate’s posts and respond with additional insights, information, questions, or links to more information on the company and strategy they shared.  Compare and contrast the strategy to the one you wrote about. Your responses should be academic in nature and linked to research and management topics discussed this week rather than personal stories of shopping with the company they chose for example.

Jeffrey Dufrene Week 2 Discussion – StrategyCOLLAPSE

I found on news article on my research company, Delta Air Lines, regarding plans to expand the aircraft maintenance portion of the company.  Delta foresees a large maintenance demand on the newest type of jet engines over the next 10 years and, therefore, has invested heavily into this segment including two new test facilities.  This strategy expects to bring in $5 billion dollars of additional revenue over the next 5 years.  While this is still a very small portion of Delta’s overall profit, this new increased revenue stream from maintenance will increase more than 5 times as current revenue is only $700 million annually.

Why I like this strategy:

• It rejuvenates one of Delta’s lowest revenue streams and greatly increases the profit.
• Delta plans to not only maintain their own fleet, but their competitors as well.
• It fits nicely as a relative diversification revenue stream and is relatively low risk.

What I would do differently:

• Delta did not capitalize on this initiative by using it as a marketing plan as well.  For example, airlines receive negative press whenever “mechanical issue” ground planes.  I would have made the marketing team put together a promotional plan demonstrating Delta’s renewed effort towards in the maintenance department with the goal of showing consumers that Delta’s planes are the safest to fly.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/delta-air-lines-opens-worlds-largest-engine-test-cell-for-growing-mainenance-business.html

Angela Hazelton Strategy for HersheyCOLLAPSE

November 2017 was the debut of the Hershey Gold bar in the US; this is the first Hershey candy bar that doesn’t have chocolate (Goldman, 2017). Fast-forward a year and this candy bar had its debut in Canada and the company is marketing specifically to young millennials (Dallaire, 2019).

The strategy focus of reaching young millennials has Hershey Canada utilizing Canadian influencers in fashion and lifestyle as well as its own hashtag campaign. Using these sources for marketing is helping the company connect more closely with younger customers that want to keep up with the latest trends. The Canadian consumers believe that the product has a unique taste profile which gives Hershey differentiation (Dallaire, 2019).

Although the target market for Hershey Canada is to reach the young millennials, I would have also had another marketing campaign that would reach a wider audience. I feel that having an older generation influencer would also bring the attention of the new candy bar to a large population, the baby boomers.

Dallaire, J. (2019, March 7) Hershey introduces Gold bar through influencer approach. Retrieved from http://strategyonline.ca/2019/03/07/hershey-introduces-gold-bar-through-influencer-approach/

Goldman, D. (2017, November 3) The first new Hershey bar in 22 years has no chocolate. Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/03/news/companies/hershey-gold/index.html