Assignment:
Question 1. Choose an industry that interests you. The industry should not be the one that you plan on doing your term project. It will be great if you choose an emerging or strategically important industry.
Question 2. What life cycle stage is the industry in? i.e., emerging, growth, shakeout (competitors acquiring other competitors or companies failing), mature, or declining industry. Give general background about the industry such as history or important characteristics.
Question 3. What are the driving forces for the industry? Typical forces are competition intensity, changing customer needs or tastes, technological innovation, regulations or deregulations, entry of major competitors and the like.
Question 4. Conduct Porter's Five-forces model analysis.
Question 5. Identify key competitors in the industry. Focus on 3-5 of them. Compare their financials, product or service details, geographic scope, market share, product or service characteristics, strategic posture, core competence and competitive advantage, critical success factors, degree of diversification, and other important factors.
Question 6. Draw the strategic groups
Question 7. What are the opportunities and threats of this industry? Which will be crucial in the future?
Question 8. What are the strategies of the firms. How are they different from each other? Do they have distinctive competences? Do their distinctive competences carry the characteristics of VRIO (valuable, rare, inimitability, and organization)?
Question 9. What are their business models? Are they working good? Conduct value chain analysis. Where do they earn most profit? In which activity to they add most value?
Question 10. Find strengths and weaknesses. Make a SWOT analysis table. What do you recommend for the firms and the industry? What do you personally learn from this industry analysis?