Chick Fil A Essay

Question 1: To be strategic is to be unique. What products and services are firms delivering today that are different, unique, and managerially viable? This especially becomes useful when a firm wants to differentiate itself from its competitors. Rather than traditional factors like cost, strategy relies on activities that allow the firm to stand out amongst an over-saturated industry (Michael E. Porter). With that, it is inevitable to divest certain activities that are not specialized, and thus dilute the firm’s overall strategy. For example, to ensure its unique product base is solely high-end winter clothing, Canada Goose will never create conventional clothing such as jeans, whereas competitor, Moncler, has released an entire denim collection.

This is why we’ve seen the chain’s introduction of more breakfast meats like sausage, to combat its financial loss through its chicken-only strategy. It will be interesting to see if this trade-off becomes weaker in the future as more people continue to boycott, and therefore, more products are needed to combat this; what will this do to Chick-Fil-A’s reputation? Recently, there has been a term coined with the demand to introduce innovative ideas: the “Big Think Strategy”. Strategies that are encompassed in the Big Think strategies are those of high innovation and high impact. In fact, these strategies are so innovative that they are almost unprecedented and therefore, other firms are not even in comparison (Bernd H. Schmitt). The author mentions how companies like Apple and Whole Foods pioneered the industry through product innovation, where Apple transformed the industry through the iPod, and Whole Foods specialized in health-specific

When looking at the firm’s capabilities, if the firm uses current technologies in a new market, that will lend itself to geographic diversification, whereas new technology in its home market would be product diversification. If my firm was looking into geographic/product diversification, the external environmental factors I would analyze include social/demographic, political/legal, economic, and technological (W1 PPT). For example, when deciding between expansion in Guangzhou, Shanghai, or Beijing, fast food chain KFC ultimately decided to expand into Beijing due to its diverse demographic with universities and tourists, and its advanced economic state. This expansion happened despite the high political risks as the government was highly prevalent in Beijing and notable for shutting larger firms in the city down. Additionally, Harley Davidson was losing domestic industry market share, and thus found expansion to be prosperous through the European Union’s and/or Thailand’s economic factors such as decreased entry tariffs, and the demographic of motorcycle riders in these areas. The potential of the country/geographic location would ultimately be deemed attractive through analyzing its environmental impacts. Additionally, the industry factors that I would analyze for attractiveness include