Industry Analysis Guidelines
SECTION I - INDUSTRY SUMMARY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE (industry name: quick service, luxury hotel, cruise….) INDUSTRY
Students always want to know expected length for written assignments. For this reason, single spaced page estimates are provided for each section of the BAP giving you an idea of the deep of analysis required.
Individual papers:
The first section would be 2 to 2.5
single spaced pages.
Pair papers:
The first section would be 3 to 3.5
single spaced pages.
All required supporting material (documentation) must be included in the appendix of your BAP. Hence, there should be no tables, charts or graphs in the body of your BAP.
A. Industry Profile
1. Industry Classification
The first part of this section is defining the industry that “your company” fits into and is an important macro identification. A valid test of the industry definition is the answer to the question "with whom does your company compete?" Be careful that the definition is not too narrow. For instance in the finance industry, Charles Schwab is a discount broker and they obviously compete with other discount brokers like Quick and Reilly and Fidelity. However, they also compete against full service brokers and deep discounters.
There is also a risk of defining the industry too broadly. For instance, total retailing in the U.S. is over $2 trillion a year. This includes everything sold to a consumer--groceries, automobiles, fast food, clothing, etc. There are sub-sections to the retail industry and these provide a better definition since they are consistent with the criteria cited above regarding which companies compete against in the market.
Hence, it would be incorrect to identify your company as part of the hospitality industry.
Explain the structure of the industry and identify the dominant companies. Who are the current players, their products, their strengths and weaknesses? A chart (which is located in the Appendix of your paper NOT within the body) showing the relative size of dominant companies compared to your analysis company is often a good idea.
2. Size and Growth
Again, you are not looking at the “hospitality” but the subset of that industry to which your company belongs.
Financial performance in this section deals with the industry and not your specific analysis company. How has the industry done in recent years and what are the projections for the future. The Value Line publication analysis is a good source for this type of information as are trade publications that are devoted to the specific industry. This is another opportunity to use a chart to show financial performance of the industry over multiple years. Do not deal with quarters but focus on annual performance.
3. Government Regulations
Again, looking at the industry what are the important government regulations (if any) that the industry is being forced to examine. Again, NOT the hospitality industry.
Format and Content Guidelines for the BAP
The paper should be in APA format with the following exceptions.
Do not modify the scope or the intent of these format factors. I will be posting an outline format for your final paper that you must use. This will become your table of contents for your paper.)
IMPORTANT: Do NOT integrate charts and graphs within the contents of the narrative but rather place them at the end of the paper in an Appendix. Refer to them in then the body of the text as Appendix A, B, etc.
Appendices listed in the body of the text MUST be in order as per APA guidelines. So the first appendix you refer to in the body of the text is Appendix A, the second is Appendix B and so for.
Appendix material is not included in the page count for your paper as it is reference material that you will be analyzing in the body of your paper.
As per APA guidelines ALL researched information placed in the appendix require citations with the source appearing in the reference/bibliography section. Since sections I and II are heavily researched these should be frequent. Section III is your analysis of the material in sections I and II so citations will be less frequent as this is in your own words.
References and the use of citations as per APA are critical and required should be included in at the end of the paper (not as footnotes as the bottom of the page).
Citations/Endnotes are not the same as a Reference page/bibliography. A reference page/bibliography is required and citations/endnotes are required. If you have no idea of what I am talking about go to
owl.english.purdue.edu and/or visit FIU’s Writing Center
All papers must be submitted to turnitin through Canvas and should have NO MORE than 5% matching text, most will have zero. This is NOT a research paper but an analysis of the
information that you researched. Even with zero % on turnitin.com you will need a fully cited paper.
Font Size is -Times New Roman 12 Pages should have ½” margins on the side with 1” margins top and bottom. Single spaced.
Completion of the analysis term paper assignment can be done through research of public domain information.
Questions…message me….don’t guess or ask a classmate.