The 7 S Model
Value Chain and Integration

Levels of Strategy
Analysis
"Hot Pot"
100

How a company is organized, where it is focused.  This "S" affects a companies strategic planning and ability to change.  It could be geographic, customer, or product-focused. 

Structure.

100

What is added at each link in the chain? 

Value 

100

Operational methods and “value-adding” activities that management chooses for its business.

Functional Strategies 

100

A tool used to describe a framework for the analysis of macroenvironmental factors.

PEST analysis 

100

What strategy is this?  When a company concentrates on either a market area, a market segment, or a product.

Focus 

200

The aggregate of behaviors, thoughts, beliefs, and symbols that are conveyed to people throughout an organization over time.

Style or Culture

200

When a company operates in areas further DOWN the value chain.

Forward Integration 

200

Battle plans used to fight the competition in the industry that a company currently participates in.

Business Strategy 

200

This factor can lower barriers to entry, reduce minimum efficient production levels, and influence outsourcing decisions.

Technological 

200

What strategy is this?

Achieving the lowest cost of production in an industry, a company can either reduce its prices or keep the increased profits to invest in research to develop new and better products.

Cost Leadership

300

This refers to the actions that a company plans in response to or in anticipation of changes in its external environment, its customers, and its competitors.

Strategy

300

When a company operates closer to the raw materials 

Backward Integration. 

300

Dynamic Strategy which looks at the whole range of business opportunities. As external and internal circumstances change, this strategy must respond or the organization will falter.

Corporate Strategy

300

Government regulations and legal issues and define both formal and informal rules under which the firm must operate.

Political 

300

What strategy is this?  

When you make your product or service appear distinct and separate from the competition. 

Differentiation. 

400

Human resource systems, which include, appraisals, training, wages, and the intangibles, such as employee motivation, morale, and attitude.

Staff

400

Companies that participate at many levels of the value chain in an industry.

Vertically Integrated

400

This strategy is uses classification based on the newness of the product to the company and the firm’s experience with the intended market.

Ansoff Matrix 

400

These factors affect the purchasing power of potential customers and the firm's cost of capital.

Economic

400

What is it called, when you send a message to your competitors in order to prevent a price war? 

Signaling

500

The procedures, both formal and informal, by which an organization operates and gathers information.

Systems 

500

When a company acquires another company at the same level of the value chain. 

Horizontal Integration. 

500

Using the Ansoff Matrix, what strategy is suitable in this situation?
If Hershey Foods Corporation wanted to sell more chocolate bars in the United States (existing product, existing market)

Penetration Strategy

500

These factors include the demographic and cultural aspects of the external macroenvironment. These factors affect customer needs and the size of potential markets.

Social Factors 

500

The process of the world becoming more interconnected through communications, trade, technology, economics etc. 

Globalization