Amazon

· SWOT Analysis

· Summarize the main findings of your SWOT Analysis. (10 points)

· Business Level Strategy

· Generic Strategy

· Is the company a cost leader, focused cost leader, differentiator, or focused differentiator? Does your company pursue a Blue Ocean Strategy? Explain. How does the firm achieve competitive advantage? (20 points)

· Are there strategic groups in the industry? Describe them. Does the company follow a special strategy based on the industry’s life cycle? (5 points)

· Is the firm’s strategy impacted or guided by technology? (5 points)

· Corporate Strategy

· Has the firm used mergers & acquisitions as a strategy? If diversification is a strategy, is it related or unrelated? Does the firm use horizontal or vertical integration as a strategy, or does it use strategic outsourcing? Is diversification related or unrelated? (10 points)

· Does the firm pay attention to ethical and environmental issues? (5 points)

· What are your strategic recommendations for the firm? (20 points)

· Organization, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, writing style, correct quoting and citation of sources. Evidence of plagiarism gets a failing grade and report to the Dean of Students. If you’re not sure what plagiarism is, please see me. (25 points)

· Feel free to come to my office hours, email me, or call me, for questions or advice.

· School of Business 310, 631-420-2187, [email protected]

· Regarding Citations and Plagiarism

· You must cite your sources within the text and then also provide a complete reference in the bibliography. If you use outside text word for word, it must be in quotation marks with an in-text citation and a listing in the bibliography. If you do not put other’s words into quotation marks and cite them, it is plagiarism, because you are passing off the words of others as your own. Even if you paraphrase someone else’s words, you must provide a citation and reference for that person’s ideas. Otherwise, it’s plagiarism, because you are passing off someone else’s ideas as your own.

· A word for word quote of more than 3 lines must be presented as a block quotation. I prefer that block quotations be indented, single-spaced, and in a smaller font, but you can follow the APA or Chicago guidelines if you prefer. In general, long quotations are frowned upon. This is supposed to be your work, not a reprinting of someone else’s work. You should work on doing your own writing.

· Only use quality sources. Some guy with a website doing SWOT analyses does not constitute a reputable source. Stick with actual professionals who do business analysis and business writing for a living. WSJ, NYT, Bloomburg, etc. Never use panmore.com, jurevicius.com, gurufocus.com, marketingteacher.com, managementstudyguide.com, marketing91.com, mbaskool.com, mba-tutorials.com, or any other similar amateur website as a source. These pages are absolutely worthless and I’ll penalize your grade if you use them or refer to them.

· Use APA for your citations and bibliography.

· There are many sources, both online and in the library, to help you with writing and editing. Don’t be passive. I expect college-level writing from you. If you are not at that level, you are responsible for working to reach that level. Avail yourself of the many resources available to you, both online and on this campus. If in doubt, visit the Writing Center, or come see me.

· Submissions must be made to the Turnitin Dropbox. Note: Only certain document types are accepted by Turnitin (MS Word (.doc), WordPerfect (.wpd), PostScript (.eps), Portable Document Format (.pdf), HTML (.htm), Rich Text (.rtf) and Plain Text (.txt). PDF documents have to be text-based, not images. If your document type is not listed above, submit as plain text.