Strategic Management Assignment Report: Unilever Case Study on Industry Analysis and Growth Strategy

SiP Assignment guidelines AY2021_22

This is an individual piece of work – select an organisation (from the given list of 5 companies) and address the following aspects:

Please provide only a short introduction to state the company and define the industry in context.

Q1.

External analysis (not about company, but about external business environment and industry). PESTEL & 5 Forces  – approx. 1300 words

PESTEL: 6 most important issues to be identified, discussed and each concluded as an O or a T. Note the difference between a category (e.g. political, economic etc.) and an issue/factor (e.g. Brexit). Your task is to identify and discuss 6 most important issues specific to the business environment you are analysing (not necessarily covering all categories). Each issue should be concluded as an O or a T. Use appropriately referenced data (e.g. charts, figures etc.) as evidence to support your arguments.

5 Forces: each force to be discussed and assessed as High, Moderate or Low. Again, use data to Having these forces in mind assess industry attractiveness.

Os and Ts from PESTEL (and 5 Forces – e.g. high rivalry) should be placed in TOWS.

Q2.

Internal analysis (resources and competences) – approx 1200 words

Resources (what a company has) – descriptive approach. Approximately 5 resources to be identified and discussed (each should be discussed in a separate paragraph and concluded as a Strength or a Weakness). Try to address human, physical and intangible resources.

Financial resources should be addressed separately by getting the latest available annual report for the organisation you are analysing, calculating ROCE, Current ratio, Gearing and Interest Cover (each for the last two years) and discussing year on year performance and hence discussing financial position as a Strength or a Weakness for the organisation.

Try to identify at least one Weakness.

Competences (what a company does). Two tables needed (Value Chain and VRIO). 5 – 10 activities (distinctive competences) should be placed in Value Chain then most important 5 of these should be pushed through VRIO to identify one Core Competence (or two at most). So, in case you listed more than 5 activities/competences in the Value Chain, select the most important 5 in your view and apply VRIO to these 5 competences.

Two distinctive competences (ideally core competences) should be discussed in detail (explain the activity, state why it is good/special, provide evidence, provide your reasoning behind VRIO – why is this activity Valuable to customers, Rare and difficult to imitate; do not worry about O, just assume that all activities have organisational support) in the main body. Each distinctive competence is a Strength, so (assuming that you identified and discussed 6 resources – 5 Ss and 1 W) in total you should have 5Ss (competences from VRIO) + 5Ss (resources) + 1W (resources).

The above Ss and Ws should be placed in TOWS.

Q3.

Strategy recommendation and evaluation – approx. 1000 words. (S: 150; A: 500; F: 150).

Your task is to make strategic recommendations (at least one). Make sure that you use TOWS to make recommendations (place at least one strategic recommendation in one of the 4 inner sections of TOWS). You do not have to populate each inner section! Then below TOWS specify clearly the strategy you are evaluating (especially if you have more than one recommendation) as it is the specific strategy that should be evaluated! Your main strategic recommendation (one that you are evaluating) should consist of a direction (as per Ansoff matrix – what you are suggesting e.g. new market development) and a method (organically or by means of mergers and acquisition or strategic alliance). Unless your chosen method is organic growth (relying on their own capabilities), you can suggest a company your firm should acquire or form a strategic alliance but you do not need to provide any further information about the other company. This should be done only in one line (e.g. the strategy can be called entry to Nigeria, new market development by acquiring XYZ company) no need to provide a discussion and use Ansoff matrix at all.

Suitability (does the strategy make sense). This criteria is covered by TOWS and since you placed your strategic recommendation in it you are linking internal and external issues with it (e.g. if you placed a strategy in SO quadrant you should have one or more Ss combined with one or more Os while contemplating the strategy). Explain briefly what Ss and Os are combined and the strategy in 200 – 300 words below TOWS.

Acceptability (you are checking if your strategic recommendation acceptable to selected stakeholders). Identify a number of stakeholder groups (e.g. 5) and place them in a Power/Interest matrix. Then select 3 groups and for each discuss how will they be affected by the strategy you are recommending and evaluating and therefore is the strategy acceptable to them or not. This way you will address one R (reactions). Other two Rs should be addressed by looking at the financial ratios:

Return: discuss ROCE (year on year performance) and hence conclude f the management is able to are sound investment decisions (if they did it for other strategies this strategy may be acceptable too).

Risk: discuss Current Ratio (year on year performance) to assess financial risk.

Feasibility (can the strategy be implemented). Discuss skills and financial resources that may be required to successfully implement your recommendation (and how did/will the company obtain these).

When it comes to financial aspects of Feasibility, discuss Gearing ratio and Interest cover (and state if they can borrow more if necessary – based on these ratios).

Since financial analysis features in 3 places (in Q2 while addressing financial resources and Q3 while addressing Acceptability and Feasibility) you should carry out calculation and interpretation for each ratio in an appendix and make references to it from questions 2 and 3 as appropriate. Please provide the accounts (P&L account and Balance Sheet) at the end of your submission (does not count towards the word count).

General guidelines

No need for conclusions (Os, Ts, forces, industry attractiveness are conclusions from Q1, Ss and Ws from resources and competences including core competences are conclusions from Q2 and TOWS and SAFe suitability, acceptability and feasibility – evaluated strategic recommendation is the conclusion for Q3).

Please do not discuss theory and models, it is all about your application.

Do not provide many pages of references (bibliography) – one is enough. It is more important to provide in-text references for figures, charts, quotes you have used in support of your arguments.

Total word count should not exceed 3850 (3500 + 10%) and you should not have more than 6 pages of appendices (plus financial account).

Please note that this is a report which means that it needs to be organised and structured (table of contents, a number of separate sections addressing the requirements, bibliography etc.).

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