MBA 540 External Market Analysis – UPS

Overview

Congratulations! You are off to a good start. You successfully completed an analysis of the company’s internal business environment.

To quickly recap, as the director of strategic planning, you are creating a new strategic planning proposal to help the company explore at least one new growth opportunity and increase its revenue or market share in the industry.

As you continue creating your proposal, in this assignment you will analyze your company’s external business environment and explain its influence on revenue or market share.

Prompt

Perform an external environment analysis of your company to identify the company’s competitive environment and find an opportunity the company can utilize to grow its revenue or market share in the industry. Use resources such as the company website, which will have pertinent information including its most recent sustainability report, and other relevant sources to help complete this presentation. You can also use the resources in the MBA Library Research Guide to conduct further research about your company.

Create a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to show the results of your analysis. Use both on-screen text and speaker notes to convey your information effectively. For example, you can use brief bulleted lists summarizing the highlights of your analysis on the slides, and include more detailed explanations where needed in your speaker notes.

Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:

1. Competitors (slide 1): Identify at least two of your company’s top competitors and explain how they compete with your company.
2. Competitive advantages (slides 2–7): Evaluate your company’s competitive advantages.
   1. Summarize the unique skill sets, products, location, and values of your company.
   2. Use Porter’s five forces to analyze your company’s competitiveness and growth potential in its industry. Assign a rating to your company for each of Porter’s five forces as very high (VH), high (H), low (L), or very low (VL). Justify your ratings.
   3. Area of opportunity (slides 8–9): Identify one area of opportunity that will help your company increase its revenue or market share over the next five years. Explain how this opportunity can lead to an increase in revenue or market share.

What to Submit

Create a PowerPoint presentation with 9–12 slides. Sources should be cited according to APA style. Consult the Shapiro Library APA Style Guide for more information on citations.

Milestone Two Rubric

Criteria	Exemplary (100%)	Proficient (90%)	Needs Improvement (70%)	Not Evident (0%)	Value
Competition	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Identifies two or more of the company’s top competitors; explains how they compete with the company	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include identifying at least two top competitors or explaining how they compete with the company using sound reasoning and relevant data	Does not attempt criterion	25
Competitive Advantages	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Summarizes the unique skill sets, products, location, and values of the company; assigns a credible rating to the company for each of Porter’s five forces with relevant justification	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include summarizing the skill sets, products, and values correctly or assigning credible ratings using sound reasoning	Does not attempt criterion	30
Area of Opportunity	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Identifies one area of opportunity that will help increase revenue or market share over the next five years; explains how this opportunity can lead to an increase in revenue or market share	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include identifying a valid area of opportunity or explaining the impact on revenue or market share appropriately	Does not attempt criterion	30
Articulation of Response	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Clearly conveys meaning with correct grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, demonstrating an understanding of audience and purpose	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, negatively impacting readability	Submission has critical errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, preventing understanding of ideas	10
Citations and Attributions	Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with few or no minor errors	Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with consistent minor errors	Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with major errors	Does not use citations for ideas requiring attribution	5
Total:					100%