國企三 陳冠言 林欣儒 呂卉仟 蕭翊方 李芝儀

Strategic Management Assignment 2

1.What are the key external forces factors?
i. Economic forces
Have direct impact on the potential attractiveness of various
strategies. It is crucial for companies to keep monitoring on
shifts to service economic, availability of credits, level of
disposable income, tendency of more spending, interest
rates, inflation rates, unemployment trends, etc.
ii. Cultural, demographic, and environmental forces
Have a major impact on virtually products, services,
markets, and customers. A new trend will create a different
type of customers that demands different type of products,
services, and strategies.
iii. Political, government, and legal forces
Represents the key opportunities or threats for both small
and large organization. Any changes in the tax or patent
law, etc. will affect a firm significantly.
iv. Technological factors (PEST)
The internet is changing the very nature of opportunities
and threats of a firm.
v. Competitive factors
The awareness of being competitive is the essential factor
for success. In order to create a successful strategy
formulation, it is essential for a company to collect and
evaluate information on competitors.

2.What are the new trends in social, cultural,

demographic, and environmental area?

 New 2011 Social (media) Trends
1. Social commerce.
It is similar to Location-based marketing because a place
where population grows rapidly will attract more people to be
more comfortable in checking out your business. Social
Commerce places are like Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla,
國企三 陳冠言 林欣儒 呂卉仟 蕭翊方 李芝儀

etc. If you notice, a lot of people that hold a Facebook

account started their own business there. Sellers can easily
set up their online store and tag their friends to let the
friend’s friends know about their Facebook store. Even if you
are not e-commencing, but this new trend makes it possible
through the social networks.
2. Video Platforms
As we already known, video sharing in Youtube has been
getting very popular in these past years, especially in this
modern society 2011. There are also other video platforms
that focuses more in business such as Dailymotion, Viddler,
and Vimeo.
3. Group Buying
There are sites where they allow customers to get their
friends together to form a group and buy a product or service
for a discounted price such as Groupon. Gorupon and similar
other sites will continue to group to reach different
audiences. A simple group buying example is when we have
to buy a new textbook that is not even released yet in used
book shops. Students will form a group to buy the new
textbooks at a cheaper and discounted price.
4. Q&A sites.’
Q&A sites is one of the new social trends of 2011. These
sites, such as Justanswer or Ask.com or Ask Jeeves, might be
different from social platforms but this marketing people can
gain data from groups of people instead of just one customer
at a time.
5. Mobile
Although that laptops has been very useful in these past
years, but now our mobile phones have more function and
features just like laptops and PCs. Customers can now do
their online shopping and make payments through their
phones.
6. Gamification and Social Gaming
Marketers can gain more customers through online gaming.
For example big companies use games in Facebooks like
Happy Pets, Farmville, etc, to market their company brands
indirectly.
國企三 陳冠言 林欣儒 呂卉仟 蕭翊方 李芝儀

 New 2011 Cultural Trends

Last year, technology is still trying to learn how to manage,
monitor, focus, etc. This year technology plays an important
part in cultural trends. This year technology will happen as it
and it will basically set up a new cultural trends from all over the
world.
1. Change as Normal
We used be amused by the new technologies, but this
year and up, people might only think as technology as a
normal thing.
2. Goals before Tools
People used to put tools before goals, but in 2011 the new
cultural technology trends will move from “what can it
do?” to “What can we do with it”. Our success now will
come from the decision of “what do I want to do” first. For
example back in the early 17th century when people want
to test out the speed of a transportation, then they would
have to travel between rivers. But now we choose our
destination first then choose our tools(transportation) that
would best meet our traveling experience.
3. Entertainment begins in the brain
Perception and meaning will leads to powerful experience
and immerse messages. Trends like transmedia
storytelling will highlight the real starting point of story
and meaning: the brain.
4. Learning to see
Creativities and innovations are born from our imagination
and images. However, converging technologies will
reinforce the importance to be able to see the solutions
in business, social issues, and education.
5. Stories as a starting points
Many of our experiences are gained from technology
related. But stories will become fundamental building
blocks of human meaning. Mixed media now-a-days will
demand a strong and consistent narrative stories to create
a genuine experience. For example the life insurance
company advertisement in Thailand. Many of Thailand’s
advertisements come with very touching and consistent
國企三 陳冠言 林欣儒 呂卉仟 蕭翊方 李芝儀

stories that placed viewers in the characters’ shoes.

6. Respecting Agencies
Interaction with the audience is a very crucial points for
any medias. Media engagement will get a company
multiple points from audience interaction and
participation, which is why respecting the audiences, will
mean that companies are also respecting their curiousity,
abilities, and agency. couch potatoes, microwave popcorn
and a Barcalounger.
 New 2011 Demographic Trends
As known modern Taiwanese and other modern people from
more advanced countries prefer to not have babies in the
twenties, rather they would probably have their babies in the
mid thirties and early forties. This new demographic trends will
affect a lot of things such as marketing strategies, house sales,
etc.
The effect of this new demographic trend will also create a
great impact in countries like Taiwan. Since the younger
generation will become less and less, it might become a
challenge for companies to promote their products. Of course
the newer generations understand how to take advantage of the
technologies, but the older generations might still sticks with
the old fashioned method. Schools will also be affected by less
babies in Taiwan. Schools might have to compete for new
students and schools might have spend a lot of money to attract
foreign students to come to study in their school. Having lesser
babies also means that the old traditional cultures will slowly
vanishes.
Another example is actually a US concern and issue.
Demographic trend is one of the driving factors when
structuring a successful real estate investment strategy. The
newer demographic trends will keep on changing its value,
which increases the demand of more pedestrian-friendly, mixed-
use communities, etc. which lead to gasoline price increase,
growth of two-person households, and the end of baby boomers
In US case, the older baby boomers that ages in the ranges
of 55 to 64 (roughly 26 million Americans) might be stuck in
their suburban properties while their children moved out and so
國企三 陳冠言 林欣儒 呂卉仟 蕭翊方 李芝儀

they would probably be likely to downsize and move to a smaller

properties. They probably might want to rent and buy a condo
that doesn’t have stairs due to their minor health problems.
While the younger baby boomers that ranges in the age
between 46 to 54 (roughly totaling as 52 million Americans)
might probably entering their peak of earning years and
probably have to face the house-market headache. They
probably will sell their properties to the much smaller size of
generation X and this will create a situation where supply is
larger than the restricted demand.
In the case of generation Y (aged in the late teens and early
30s, which makes up of 83 million Americans) probably has
watched the earlier generation loses their homes and so their
views toward home association might be significantly impacted,
in result they might want or forced to be renters. They would
prefer to live in more urban area and in a smaller space but still
close to their friends and workplace, and they would rather walk
than drive.
 New 2011 Environmental Trends
Global warming has been a very big issue in these recent years.
So the new environmental trends in 2011 will be a more eco
friendly trends. The main focus will be to go green.
1. Eco superior products: Products that are eco-friendly and
also do better than non-eco friendly products
2. More accurate green claims: Green guides to help
marketers avoid misleading green claims that help customers
to be more familiar with the products’ environmental impacts
3. Luxury vehicles and alternative mobility: Luxury
carmakers like Benz, Porsche, BMW started to go hybrids with
their cars since oil supplies will automatically runs out if
people don’t preserve it well.
4. Green travel: Voluntourism or Volunteer tourists will engage
more in green travel programs, they would stay in green
hotels or also known as zero-carbon hotels.
5. Green building: New building will be built with solar power
and a new structure to reduce water usage in response to
global water crisis.
As for the Business world, there are also new trends for them in
國企三 陳冠言 林欣儒 呂卉仟 蕭翊方 李芝儀

2011:
1. Charting progress and success: Big companies like
Walmart and Microsoft started to change their whole business
plan in order to focus exclusively on environmental
sustainability. These companies raised the green bar for
other small and big sized companies.
2. Eco-managing the supply chains: In order for green
companies to keep their green image, they set higher green
standards for their suppliers.
3. LEDs get more plays: Light is one of the biggest cost for
companies. But now companies can use a less efficient
source to replace light, which called LED. LED use at least 75
percent less energy than incandescent and even less than
compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). In addition, many utilities
are introducing rebates to make the upfront costs of LED
lighting more palatable.
4. Greater employee engagement: Many companies realize
that it is important to educate their employees about the
green practices, so they will be communicating more
frequently to their employees to create green teams and
other engaging techniques.
5. Smarter green marketing: Many companies are also
getting savvier in communicating their environmental
sustainability, so they will do a lot of creative ways in order to
communicate with their customers about this issue and they
would probably put more pages on their websites about
going green.