MGMT 449

INDICATIONS FOR THE FINAL PROJECT

ON INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

Spring 2018

Format:

As specified in the syllabus, the paper has to be a minimum of 10 pages, with 1.5 or double spacing and
font 12. The limit of 10 pages does not include annexes/appendixes. You can add as many tables, figures,
and images as you wish at the end of your paper.

 Please check the due date on your syllabus

 You have to submit a printed copy of your work in class on the day of your presentation.
 All presentations will be a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 minutes long. You will be given
a warning at 15 minutes and will be cut off at 20.

GENERIC EVALUATION CRITERIA

Generic Evaluation Criteria for the paper:

 Strength of the findings of your analysis.

Performance is properly analyzed. The degree of influence of the Porter’s five-forces on

industry performance is appropriately assessed and the core Key Success Factors are
identified and accurately justified.

 Concreteness.

You should provide solid, measurable, verifiable and reliable information to support
your claims and analyses. Do not merely rely on descriptive and generic observations.

 Relevance.
 You should provide all and only the most important elements. Do not provide redundant
or tangential information. You can have a brief introduction to the company’s history,
but do not spend a lot of time on the history of the companies if it is not necessary for
your conclusions.

 Integration.

In the Key Success Factors analysis you should identify elements which belong to
different functions (operations, marketing, finance, information systems, human
resources, etc…) and show your capacity to integrate them. You do not need to identify
elements for all functions, especially if you believe that some functions are not
significantly important for performance in your industry.

 Exhaustiveness.

You should take information from many sources of evidence. CITE ALL SOURCES BOTH
IN THE TEXT AND AT THE END OF THE PAPER. Cite each source ANYTIME you use a piece
of information from it.

 Analytical detail.

You should always explain how the pieces of evidence you provide support or
disconfirm your statements in the text.

 Team assignment.

You should perform a team assignment. Do not simply divide tasks and aggregate them
at the last minute. I want to see consistency in the final document, showing that you
have all participated to the core decisions, read the whole work, complemented each
other’s parts and created a homogeneous document.

 Style & Literacy

Paper must have an engaging style and adhere to the rules of grammar.

Evaluation Criteria for the Oral Presentation:

Look at the SPEAKS document which I have posted for you on Titanium

Timing: finish on time!

Indications on how to choose your industry:

Choosing the right industry is very important. If you choose an industry which is too difficult to analyze,
your work could suffer. If you choose an industry that is too easy to analyze, your analysis may not be
particularly insightful. Devote adequate time with your team members to choose the industry you want
to focus your analysis on.

Do not choose industries that are excessively fragmented and in which most
competitors have small market shares.

Do not choose oligopolies that have only one, two or three competitors.

Choose industries for which you can get vast access to information. Before you choose
your industry, be sure to adequately explore the internet to assess the quantity of
information available.

STRUCTURE OF THE FINAL DOCUMENT

The final paper should be divided into six parts:

1. Executive Summary (suggestion: ½ page)

2. Introduction (suggestion: ½ page or 1 page)
3. Performance analysis (suggestion: 2-3 pages)
4. Porter’s Industry Analysis (suggestion: 3-5 pages)
5. Key Success Factors (KSF) Analysis (suggestion: 3-5 pages)
6. Conclusion (suggestion: ½ page or 1 page)

PART 1: Executive Summary

Suggested Length: suggestion: ½ page

Description

Summarize why you choose the industry, what you discovered (your thesis statement) and what are
your conclusions and recommendations. Most executive would only read this section of report and may
not read the rest of the report if they are not impressed by its contents.

Part 2: INTRODUCTION

Suggested Length: ½ page or 1 page

Description

The purpose of the introduction is twofold:

A) Provide a definition of your industry and a specification of its boundaries.

Depending on the way in which you define the boundaries of the industry, the indications about
profitability change. You need to identify geographic boundaries, product boundaries or segment
boundaries. For some industries the boundaries are clear and self-explanatory: for instance, Beer
Brewers in the United States. For some other industries the boundaries are less clear and you need to
specify the focus of your analysis: for instance, Luxury Cosmetics in the United States. What are luxury
cosmetics? What is the profile of consumers who buy them?

Identify the companies in which you focus your Key Success Factors analysis. You should focus your Key
Success Factor analysis on the 4-8 most important companies in the industry.

Example:

This paper analyzes the domestic US airline industry. The domestic US airline industry includes the US-
based companies that provide civil aviation services. Our analysis is focused on the following companies:
American Airlines, US Airways, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. We focus on these
companies because they represent the major operators in the United States. We exclude from the
analysis foreign companies which operate in the United States (for instance Air France or Lufthansa).

B. State your Thesis statement

This is what your research hinted about the industry.

Example:

We discovered that the U.S airline industry has very high degree of competition and low profitability.

Specific Evaluation Criteria:

 Clear and specific definition of the industry boundaries.

 A Clear thesis statement
 Identification of a representative set of companies for the KSF analysis. Do not exclude
important companies from your analysis. Justify your choices persuasively.

PART 3: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

Suggested Length: 2-3 pages

Description

The purpose of the performance analysis is to assess the extent to which the industry is profitable and
the distribution of profitability among competitors.

You have to specifically answer to these questions:

 How profitable is my industry? Is it highly profitable or not?

 Which are the most profitable and least profitable companies?
 Which companies are profitable, socially responsible and environmentally conscientious?

To assess if the industry is profitable:

 Identify generic performance indicators (profits, sales, ROE, ROA, stock prices, etc…).
 Analyze the evolution over time of performance indicators (is performance growing or
decreasing?)
 Benchmark the performance indicators of your industry with the performance indicators of
similar industries (for instance compare the profitability of the US airline industry with the
profitability in the European Airline Industry; compare the profitability of the beer industry with
the profitability of the wine or liqueur industry).

To assess how profitability is distributed among the main competitors:

 Identify generic performance indicators (profits, sales, ROE, ROA, stock prices, etc…).
 Compare the performance indicators of main competitors to identify which companies are best.

N.B. = profitability ratios are the best performance indicators but if your competitors are diversified
companies which operate in multiple businesses you may not be capable of getting profitability ratios.
For instance, if you focus on the Videogame Console industry you will not be capable of getting the
profit of X-Box but only the profit of Microsoft and you will not get the profit of the PlayStation but only
the profit of Sony. In these cases, use multiple performance indicators to derive an appreciation of
performance. Even if you will not get profits you can get sales. You can use reflective indicators of
performance, such as innovation, growth in size, growth in operations, growth in investments, stock
fluctuations after major product innovations, etc… You can use industry reports, company reports,
newspaper articles which provide performance assessments even if the companies do not formally
disclose profitability information.

Remember to provide your evaluation of the profitability of the industry. Do not simply describe
numbers but explicitly judge if the industry is highly profitable, moderately profitable, or not profitable. I
want to see your capacity to judge and not just to describe.
Specific Evaluation Criteria:

 High level of detail

 Variety of sources of information
 Use of multiple indicators to assess performance
 Exhaustive analysis of the performance evolution and benchmark with other industries
 Appropriate judgment of the performance in the industry

PART 4: PORTER’S ANALYSIS

Suggested Length: 3-5 pages

Description:

The purpose of the Porter’s analysis is to identify the reasons why your industry is profitable or not
through the analysis of the main drivers of competition in the industry.

You have to specifically answer to this question:

 Why is my industry profitable or not profitable?

To perform the Porter’s analysis, describe in detail how each of the five core competitive forces apply to
your industry:

 Suppliers
 Buyers
 Substitutes
 New Entrants
 Internal rivalry

Remember to provide your explicit evaluation of each competitive force. For instance, do not simply
describe the suppliers or buyers but tell me if you think that supplier power is high or low and explain
me how it is likely to positively or negatively affect profitability in the industry. Summarize your analysis
in at least one paragraph where you integrate all of your discussion and tell us how you see the industry.

Specific Evaluation Criteria:

 High level of detail.

 Variety of sources of information.
 Validity of the analysis (your evaluation of the main factors is correct and well justified).
 Factual-based evidence: try to report as much quantitative and objective evidence as possible to
support your claims. Do not be generic and abstract but concrete and specific. For instance, if
 you claim that investments in the industry have decreased over the last 5 years, provide
evidence to show the extent to which they have decreased and explain why.
 Be consistent. Show me that you use similar judgment, similar level of detail and similar quality
for all forces considered. Show me that you perform a team exercise in which everyone adjusts
and improves each other’s work and not in which everyone independently performs a piece of
work.

PART 5: KEY SUCCESS FACTORS ANALYSIS

Suggested Length: 3-5 pages

Description:

This is the most important analysis part of your group project.

The purpose of the Key Success Factors analysis is to identify the reasons why some companies are
performing better than others in the industry. You have to focus only on the 4-8 major companies that
you have identified in the introduction. While the Porter’s analysis makes you understand why the
industry is profitable as a whole, the KSF analysis makes you understand why a company is more
profitable than others in the industry.

You have to specifically answer to this question:

 Why company X is more profitable than company Y in my industry?

To perform the Key Success Factors analysis:

 Identify a set of 5 to 10 Key Success Factors which are likely to affect companies’ performance
in the industry. We will explain what KSF are in class.
 Briefly describe each KSF explaining why it is important for the industry you have chosen.
 Rank the companies considered for each Key Success Factor.
 Explain why each company scores high or low for each of the Key Success Factors considered.

Example.

If you are performing the analysis on the US Airline Industry, you can identify, among others, the
following KSF which are likely to impact companies’ performance:

 Customer Service
 Fuel Efficiency
 Delays and operational efficiency at the airport
  Fleet composition
 Pricing options
 Fidelity programs
 Alliances with partner organizations
 Financing of planes
 Unionization of the workforce

For each KSF provide one paragraph to explain why the KSF is likely to affect performance in the
industry. Then, rank each of the companies for each KSF and explain me why each company is scoring
high or low in the KSF you are analyzing. For instance when you describe Fidelity Programs, start
describing why fidelity programs are likely to affect performance in the airline industry. Then rank the
Airline companies on the basis of the extent to which they apply fidelity programs. After, briefly describe
how each Airline applies fidelity programs. In the end, you have to be capable of providing a clear
positioning of each company with respect to the KSF considered and explain why a company is stronger
than others.

Specific Evaluation Criteria:

 High level of detail.

 Variety of sources of information.
 You identify a valid pool of KSF in the industry: you do not forget important drivers and you do
not include relatively unimportant drivers.
 You persuasively justify why each KSF is likely to be of particular importance in your industry.
 You are integrative: consider KSF which relate to several business functions in organizations
(marketing, operations, finance, HR, IS, etc...).
 You effectively rank all companies considered.
 You effectively and convincingly describe each KSF for each company considered.
 Factual-based evidence: try to report as much quantitative and objective evidence as possible to
support your claims. Do not be generic and abstract but concrete and specific.
 Be consistent. Show me that you use similar judgment, similar level of detail and similar quality
for all KSF considered. Show me that you perform a team exercise in which everyone corrects
and improves each other’s work and not in which everyone independently performs a piece of
work.

Part 6: Conclusion

Description

Conclusion summarizes your arguments, restates your thesis and findings, and makes recommendations
for policy makers or future research.
 REFERENCES

 Choose either MLA or APA style and be consistent

 Cite ALL sources of information BOTH at the end of the paper and in the text ANYTIME in which
you use each source of information. If you borrow multiple pieces of information from a single
source, you have to report, using parentheses, the source of information at the beginning or at
the end of EACH sentence in which you use it.

APPENDIXES

There is no page limit for the use of appendixes. Use appendixes as much as you want to provide
complementary information, tables and figures that strengthen your analysis.