Revising

1. Did they provide a conclusion for the industry’s attractiveness (overall profitability)?

There was no overall summary of industry profitability or attractiveness. An intro or conclusion section to summarize this would be helpful.

2. Include each of the five forces (Barriers to entry, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, intensity of rivalry, and threat of substitutes).

Yes they included all five forces.

a. Barriers to entry (if high should include a government or legal barrier)

They identified high capital investment, labor costs and economies of scale as barriers to entry. No government regulations to enter. Perhaps give us an overall rating (high/moderate/low) for this section. We suggest moving the “barriers to entry” content from your competitor section to your “threats to new entrants” section.

b. Bargaining power of buyers and suppliers (specify who the buyers (e.g. household consumers; bottlers) and suppliers (e.g. key inputs: commodities; caramel) are)

They identified the buyers and provided the level of power. Buyers are wholesalers and individual consumers. Bargaining power for buyers is medium. Wholesalers has been traditionally high but has decreased to low in recent years. Bargaining power for individuals is high. They generally described the suppliers but did not clearly identify them. They provided a supplier power level of low. Describing the process more fully and identifying each particular supplier in the process would help. For example, where do they get the raw materials from, who manufacturers the product? Is it all the same supplier or separate entities from raw inputs to final shipment?

c. Threat of Substitutes (make sure they do not mention competitors here)

They mentioned substitutes, which are not the competitors, as defined by the premium athletic footwear industry. They mentioned competitors Nike, but did not state it was a substitute. The largest identified substitute was the casual footwear industry.

d. Intensity of Rivalry (do they make an assessment regarding a price war; provide appropriate evidence of pricing trends)

They start talking about barriers to entry in this section, which is a separate analysis. We suggest explicitly stating that there are no price wars, if there aren’t any (It just says footwear is around the same price). At the end of the first section they identified a “strong rivalry” between Adidas and Puma but not the footwear industry overall.

3. Are their conclusions logically consistent? If the threats are high, do they conclude the industry is unattractive?

They make some general statements, such as exiting and entering can be costly, and it might be stronger if they could add some numbers or evidence to back this up. Very little research and facts about the industry is provided. Most of the paper seems like opinion about the industry. It seems there are significant amounts of information in this analysis that do not help to explain whether the industry is attractive or not, and whether the each of the five forces are weak, moderate, or strong. Examples of this type of extraneous information are the early histories of Puma and Adidas, as well as the details regarding the sneaker resale market.