Corporate Strategy Analysis Discussion

The Destination CEO videos offered a great insight into the lives of the people that have to run the huge organizations. It seems as if all of them have been faced with a challenge somewhere within their careers. The following paper will discuss the different corporate strategies: growth, stability, and renewal. It will also discuss how each CEO used the planning function of management which are concentration, vertical integration, and diversification. Corporate Strategy Analysis Discussion After watching the video about Southwest Airlines CEO, Gary Kelley, the strategies he uses are nearly word for word what we came up with as a group, as stated by the video. He uses a very simple model; “to keep costs down, fly all same planes, 737s, so parts and maintenance are easy, treat customers as kings and queens, and employees even better.” (Businessweek, n.d).

He treats his employees like family and friends by asking them about their days and how they are doing. We believe that by not dehumanizing his staff, Kelley is creative a familiar feeling within the company and it helps maintain a lower turnover rate of the staff. That alone is a way Kelley is keeping costs down. The Coca-Cola board brought Nevel Isdel, CEO of Coca-Cola back from retirement. His view was, that instead of “globe-trotting, and introducing Coca-Cola to new markets and countries, it would be more successful to acquire new companies.” Although successful, as a group we felt that this kind of attitude is what initially may have caused the slump in sales for Coca-Cola. The video references how the board of Coca-Cola is hard to work with and had driven away 2 CEO’s before deciding to bring back Isdel from retirement.

The strategies used by Coca-Cola are in our opinions too harsh and bullish to have an enveloping feel from the company to its consumers. We believe that unfortunately this feeling and attitude of the company comes from the company’s longevity and its roots to the past. They came from the early 1900’s, when no corporate company was set as they are today. There was a lot more head to head competition to nationalize and to become the “only company” to sell and be successful. Contrast that environment, to today’s corporate atmosphere, due to the sheer size of company such as Coca-Cola and others as large, smaller up and comers can seek out to niche markets and not have to necessarily worry about becoming next Coca-Cola or becoming “the only company.” Coca-Cola is unable to be the familiar brand that reaches out to its consumer at a personal level now that it is one of the largest conglomerates in the world. The CEO of VF Corporation, is actually content knowing that his consumers not knowing the name of his company so long as they buy his brands.

The group and I were a bit in disagreement about this CEO. Because McDonald is very savvy with branding, he can successfully sell his brands. Instead of being one brand for all, he has a company that sells different brands to its consumers from a broader approach. This approach would be, in my opinion more successful because consumers want things that are, or at least seem to be, tailored to their lifestyles. VF Corporation excels with this idea and buys smaller companies to create its lines of lifestyle clothing. The brands range from Lee jeans, Wrangler Jeans, Nautica, NorthFace, and others. Because of McDonald’s view VF has become the world’s largest manufacturer and seller of jeans. There are many different ways to successfully run a company.

Some ways work for some, and definitely no one way will work for all. Some companies require to be run on a more familiar, person-to-person direction. And others, in my opinion primarily the larger and older companies, need to be run on a more distant way from its consumers. Each corporation will find what best works for them, the larger the company will put the bottom line at a higher priority than consumer satisfaction and consumer experience. This also highly dependent on the kind of product or service that is being produced.

References

Businessweek (n.d.). [Video file]. Retrieved from Vimeo website: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=https://newclassroom3.phoenix.edu/Classroom/%23/contextid/OSIRIS:45384918/context/co/view/activityDetails/activity/f753a241-1ff4-4d49-ab6b-c60e51e3f493/expanded/False/tab/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8