Question 1. Choose one of the companies on Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired” list: http://fortune.com/worlds-most-admired-companies/ . Conduct a brief SWOT analysis for your chosen company. Make sure to include a short discussion about why and how the factors included in your SWOT are expected to impact your chosen company.

Note: you can find useful information about companies, industries and markets in the Business Source Complete database (i.e., ideally you should not be relying exclusively on Google). See the How to find information in the UHV library document for a tutorial on accessing BSC. DO include a “References” section citing all the sources of information you used in constructing your analysis.

Remember, SWOT analysis is a summary of the Internal/External, Positive/Negative factors that are expected to have an impact on the performance of a firm: STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES OPPORTUNITIES THREATS

External factors include:

 macro-environment factors: identify the relevant segments and trends in the demographic, economic, regulatory, socio-cultural and technological environment;

 industry factors: industry trends, industry competitiveness, market size and growth, etc.

Internal factors include:  organizational analysis: factors such as company mission, products and services, company strategy, etc.

 company resources and capabilities: tangible and intangible resources, value chain analysis, sources of sustainable competitive advantage;

 financial analysis: profitability, growth, etc. Positive factors Negative factors Internal factors External factors MKTG 3303 Dr. C. Liutec 2

Question 2. Conduct 1 short interview aimed at gauging Attributes, Benefits/Consequences and Values associated with undergraduate business programs. Use the laddering interview technique (see the Laddering Notes on the course website and Chapter 5 lecture notes). Some guidelines: – You should be able to elicit at least 2 attributes for the Attribute level of the ladder; – For Step 3. (Analyzing the Data) you only need to create the ladder. Due to the very small sample size, you will not be able to create a meaningful Implication Matrix or Hierarchical Value Map). What you should turn in for this question: 1) Ladders from your interviews (don’t forget to indicate which are the Attributes, the Benefits/Consequences and the Values). 2) The relevant (brief) quotations from the interviews.