Surname 1 Student’s name: Professor’s name: Course: Date: Strategic Management Questions 1. What are the primary aspects of the strategic management process? You may reference specific chapters from the text in formulating your response. Strategic management process is a rational method that firms apply to achieve strategic competitiveness within the market. They include: i. Analysis of competitive position which involves a situation whereby managers try’s to understand the internal and external audits of the business hence conducted to make the organizational stakeholders come into reality. Through this process the firm is able to identify its strong holds that places it a greater position of the completion to outdo its competitor from the market. ii. Strategy formulation which implies the company applying its real position in sustaining itself in the external environment. It apply all its abilities in the market using extensive researches over what it offers and even rebrands to meet the customer’s expectations in the field marketing and its strategic analysis for a better performance. iii. Strategic development here the functional strategies of a business are put in place to be tracked specifically for the development of the business Surname 2 where various strategies are developed leading to a better understanding of the business throughout its operations. Through these establishments, the firm is able to identify its strength and weakness in the business. While the real strategies are applied, the firm majorly targets its internal audits that are meant to support its operations. 2. Identify and describe the three major parts of the external environment. What is the purpose for a firm to collect information about these aspects of its environment? i. Scanning-is the process of studying the general units that comprises the environment. The purpose of scanning process is to help the firm to foresee the implications that it might have hence setting the trends in the overall environment leading to establishment of the business niche and marking its boundaries of operations. ii. Monitoring-This is a process that precedes the scanning process to identify the major trends that were identified at the scanning stage. Its main purpose is to help the firm identify the meaning of various environmental trends leading to the firms specialties in its various sectors of production a point that can be seen from the willingness of the firm to clearly outline its operational schedules. iii. Forecasting-Unlike the scanning and monitoring which covers events and trends in the environment, forecasting gives a feasible prediction of what might be expected and a quickly it should be taken into consideration Surname 3 (page 43). 3. What is a firm’s strategic group? What effect does the strategic group have on the firm? Firm’s strategic group is the process of a firm imposing similar strategic analysis in setting in place its events and trends identified. Hence the firm imposing strategic group has a greater hand in the competition among other firms. Greater performance is noticed to firms that emphasize strategic group than firms that do not empress the strategy. There as, leaders following this strategy are ahead of other firms leaders. The strategy also helps in analyzing the firm’s competitive structure an act that uniquely place it the market. This strategy is mainly applied by firms that deal with a specific line of production. 4. Describe a value chain analysis. How does a value chain analysis help a firm gain competitive advantage? The value of chain analysis is to aid the firm to identify the important parts of the firm that creates value to the firm and that do not. Hence making the firm concentrate much of its resources in those particular areas I order to gain much market than its competitors offering the same services.