Use the following template for this  Week 4 Assignment: Positioning Statement and Motto Template [DOCX] .

• Download this template to your computer and Save As using the following identifier: LastName_FirstName_Week4_Assignment.
• This week, we will focus on section three: Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and section four: Positioning Statement and Motto.

For additional help with this section of the Week 4 Assignment template, review Chapter 6 in your textbook, and review the resources linked below.

• Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

How is your brand better than its competitors? Review 10 Examples of Killer Unique Selling Propositions on the Web before you craft your USP for your business.

Using your work from the Competitors section of the template, assess how your brand is different from the competitors you assessed.

What do you think your selected business does better than its competitors?

Why would customers want this product or service over the leading competitors?

Follow these five steps to determine your USP.

List the features and benefits that are unique about your product or service. 

Do a Google search and compare these features and benefits with your direct competitors. Identify the benefits that set your product apart.

Decide what emotional need is being specifically met by your product or service. 

• Think about this from your customer’s perspective and add it to your list.
• Identify aspects of your product or service that your competitors cannot imitate. 

Put a star beside anything that cannot be easily duplicated, reproduced, or copied.

Create phrases about your unique product or service that are short, clear, and concise. 

1. Use the words from steps 1–3 that you singled out. Be sure they can be easily communicated and understood by your customers.

Answering your customer’s primary question, “What’s in it for me?” 

• Make it succinct and state it as a benefit to the customer.

1. Determining What Makes Your Brand Unique

What is the brand’s uniqueness? 

• What makes your brand unique? What makes it stand out?

1. Why do you think this is attribute is unique?

Why do you think customers will want this particular uniqueness? For example, Chick-Fil-A’s customer service is unique. Most fast-food restaurants do not offer such high-quality service. Many consumers flock to Chick-Fil-A to be treated well.

• What is the competitive advantage of the brand? How is it different from other competing brands?

1. What does your brand do better than its leading competitors?

What type of advantage do they have over the competitors? For example, when Steve Jobs invented the iPod touch technology, he knew it was going to be big. He purchased 10 years’ worth of raw material needed to build touch screens. Brands that wanted to copy Apple’s technology had to pay a much higher price for the supplies. This gave Apple the competitive advantage of being able to produce the product at half the cost of the competition.

• Does the brand have any attributes or benefits that dominate competitors? 

1. What attributes (properties) or benefits do you see that dominate the competitors? For example, iPhones dominate the smartphone market and have done so for many years. Other brands may have more features, lower costs, and a longer battery life, but iPhone buyers are loyal (sometimes jokingly referred to as a cult!). While iPhones were among the first touchscreen phones, it was their user-friendly platform and their ability to communicate seamlessly across other Apple devices that made them popular worldwide.

Positioning Statement and Motto

• Develop a new positioning statement for the brand you selected.  

Define your actual positioning statement for the business and discuss why you have decided upon this actual positioning statement. Remember, once you write your positioning statement, make sure you address why you created it and why you think it will work. 

View How to Write Market Positioning Statements. It explains what needs to go inside of a positioning statement and provides examples. 

Develop a new motto for the brand you selected.  

• Create the new motto for the business and then discuss why you created this specific motto. In many cases, slogans and mottos are the same; as you are creating your motto, keep that in mind. Once you create your motto, make sure you address why you created the motto and why you think it will work. 

Turbulence on United Airlines

The beginning of 2017 was not good for United Airlines. Several incidents involving United Airlines personnel enforcing a variety of rules, regulations, and protocols in employees’ interactions with customers ensued, causing international outcry.

The first incident involved two teenagers who were wearing leggings onto their flight from Minneapolis to Denver. They were stopped by the gate agent and not allowed to board for violating the United Airlines travel perk program. These travel perk passes hinge upon a requirement for users of the passes to dress themselves in such a way that the airline is presented in a favorable light. United defended its decision via Twitter, noting “Legging are not inappropriate attire except in the case of someone traveling as a pass rider.” Comedian Seth Rogan tweeted, “We here at United are just trying to police the attire of the daughters of our employees! That’s all! Cool, right?”

A second, more severe incident occurred when David Dao, a doctor who needed to see his patients the following morning, was aboard a Louisville bound flight from Chicago in April. Four United employees needed to get to Louisville last-minute and it was announced that four people needed to give up their seats or else the flight would be cancelled. Attendants called the police after no one complied, who approached Dao in aggressive manager, forcibly removing him from the plane (he suffered a broken nose and concussion after his head smashed into an armrest). United policy allowed for the involuntary removal of passengers from flights, although this time United was not as defensive. Dao later filed a lawsuit against United for their actions.

A third incident, in Houston involved a to-be-married couple, Michael and Amber, headed to Costa Rica for their wedding. When they entered the plane, they noticed a man sleeping in the row where their seats were assigned. Instead of disturbing him, they found some seats three rows up and sat there instead. They were soon asked by an attendant to return to their seats and they complied. A U.S. Marshall approached them soon after and ejected them from the plane. According to United statements, the couple kept “repeatedly” trying to sit in upgraded seats and would not follow the instructions of the attendants and crew members, and, as such, they were within their power to eject the passengers.

These incidents suggest that, starting with the structure as laid forth by the CEO, United employees’ do not have much latitude or flexibility to deal with day-to-day policy breaches. Cost-minimization and efficiency-boosting strategies, when taken overboard, also may have had an effect given that the focus drifted from the customer and toward rule following. Many attribute this inflexibility to the strict, rule-following bureaucracy that has been set forth by United leaders. In this bureaucracy, their 85,000 employees may be reluctant to deviate from the rules—intra-company historical precedent suggests that many employees face termination when breaking the rules.

Sources: S. Carey, “Behind United Airlines’ Fateful Decision to Call Police;
Airline’s Rules-Based Culture in Spotlight After Man Was Dragged off Flight by
Law Enforcement,” The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2017, J. Disis and J. Ostrower, “United Airlines in Twitter Trouble Over Leggings Rule,” CNN Money, March 27, 2017, money.cnn.com/2017/03/26/news/united-airlines-twitter-dress-code/; A. Hartung,
“Why United Airlines Abuses Customers: The Risks of Operational Excellence,” Forbes, April 10, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/04/10/why-united-airlines-abuses-customers-the-risks-of-operational-excellence/#78a1af3fbb10; M. Hiltzik, “At United Airlines and Wells Fargo, Toxic Corporate Culture Starts With the CEO,” Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2017,
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-toxic-united-wells-20170411-story.html;
E. C. McLaughlin, “Man Dragged off United Flight Has Concussion, Will File Suit, Lawyer Says.”

Stephen P. Robbins (San Diego State University) and Timothy A. Judge (The Ohio State University). Organizational Behavior. (18th Edition). 2019. Pearson Education Inc. ISBN-13: 978-0-13-47293-29.

Please provide your thoughts on the following questions?

Do you think that United Airlines was within its power to have removed these people from the flight? Why or why not? What are the pros and cons of having a bureaucratic organizational structure for an airline?

Discuss what you see as the sponsor’s business objective, and answer the question “why is data useful in addressing that?”

Examples include:

• Discuss the business objective the data solves
• How is the data useful, and what specifically does it address regarding the business objective__

—Sponsor companies have their own goals and objectives when offering sponsorship, which can include the following:

1. Lead generation
2. Improving brand awareness
3. Embracing a new role
4. Standing out from the competition
5. Gaining media exposure
6. Extending their reach
7. Driving more sales

The real key to success with sponsorship is finding the insights that connect consumers and businesses. The time, place, and feeling connect them and create preference, recognition, learning, and buying. When it works, we all get it. Sometimes we do not get it because we are not the target. Other times it is off the mark. It is like making a delicious meal, and most people can tell if it looks nice and tastes good. But, making the recipe, knowing the ingredients, and the proper preparation takes experience and a willingness to develop the insights that separate your deal from the crowd.

Business leaders in data-driven organizations understand the benefits of relying on data insights to make wise business moves. Data allows organizations to use evidence-based data to make decisions and plan carefully to pursue business objectives. Suppose business strategy provides a roadmap between your organization’s current and desired future state. In that case, data strategy offers a combination of mile markers, signposts, and a clear windshield through which to see them.

Specifically, data strategy serves three essential purposes in supporting both present and future business goals.

• Guiding decisions and actions to support your business goal
• Providing a feedback loop for your business strategy
• Uncovering new opportunities

Today, running a business with the help of data is table stakes. If we are not using data to uncover insights that will guide our business into the future, we will become a business of the past. Fortunately, the advances in data processing and visualization make growing the business with data more accessible than ever.

References:

1) Grover, Varun, et al. “Creating strategic business value from big data analytics: A research framework.” Journal of Management Information Systems 35.2 (2018): 388-423.

2) Marinos, George. “The Information Supply Chain; Achieving Business Objectives by Enhancing Critical Business Processes.” Information Management 15.4 (2005): 20.

—Hi All,

The sponsors business objectives is to assist their clients in realizing their full potential through data by enabling digital transformation, increasing operational efficiency, and increasing human productivity. The data used by the sponsors provided by various industries namely:

1. Banking and Finance
2. Healthcare
3. Insurance
4. Government and Law
5. Transportation and Logistics

The above industries will have multiple use cases in their particular business and the docdigitizer will help them by providing professional services in implementing their solutions and execute strategies to program a challenging task. They suggest the clients in use of services like IDP ( Intelligent Document Processing) bundling with Robot Process automation and Business process modeling. The data solves various business problems such as the core features is to provide near 100% accuracy, no code data capture.

When utilizing IDP, there are two things to keep in mind. First and foremost, you must comprehend the technologies required to extract the relevant data from the document. It also relies on the type of data that is being extracted. Structured data necessitates less sophisticated technologies. Unstructured and partially structured data, on the other hand, necessitate more sophisticated tools.Second, take into account the data format. Paper documents, faxes, emails, and attachments, as well as MS Office files such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and others, may be received by an organization. And the information comes from a variety of sources and gadgets.An Intelligent Data Processing system should, in theory, recognize, classify, and extract important data before routing it to the appropriate document workflows for review.

Using IDP will benefit the client in following ways:

1. Cost Optimization
2. Accessibility
3. Error Prevention
4. Increased productivity
5. Optimized data integration

References:

Tavares, R. (2021, December 16). Intelligent Document Processing. Docdigitizer. https://www.docdigitizer.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-document-processing-redefining-intelligent-data-capture/ (????????)

W. (2022, March 21). New Page. Docdigitizer. https://www.docdigitizer.com/ (????????)

Thanks,

Read the “Office Space, A Company’s Frontier: The Corporate Decision to Buy or Lease” (attached below) case study and answer the questions below. Please submit your write-up and excel workbook with your discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis to Canvas on or before Wednesday, April 13th, 2022, at 5:29 pm eastern standard time. Groups of no more than 5 or 6 are allowed (free to choose your own groups). This assignment is graded for completeness (answering all the questions), effective write-up (clear and free of grammatical errors), and thoughtfulness of your answers (demonstrate knowledge and critical thinking). See the case study rubric for additional information, including guidelines and grading criteria.

Business Assumptions:

• Assume that Drechtal receives approval of their first oncology drug, Trianoline.
• Equity is limited. Whatever equity Drechtal will need to purchase its headquarters could alternatively be invested in its core business, should it not purchase its headquarters.
• Every dollar Drechtal invests in its core business generates cash flow equal to 9.132% of the investment. At the same time, the investment’s value grows by 2% annually. (This means that the cash flow generated by new investment is also growing at 2%.)
• The depreciable life of all new pharmaceutical investments is 10 years.
• In Switzerland, both the corporate tax rate and the capital gains tax rate are 18% (both price appreciation and depreciation recapture).
• Drechtal’s CFO is confident that given its current capital structure (approximately 57% debt), its required return on equity (for its core business) is 22%.
• Drechtal can borrow in the Swiss bond market at 2% up to a 10-year maturity, with annual coupons on the bonds and no amortization. Should Drechtal invest in its core business, it will initially borrow at time 0 in the Swiss bond market so that its initial capital structure is unchanged. Drechtal will not adjust its debt holdings going forward.

Lease-Buy Assumptions:

• Office tenants in Basel sign 10-year NNN leases, with a 5% step-up in rent in Year 5.
• A single-tenant A-quality office building with a long lease typically incurs capital expenditures equal to roughly 16% of NOI.
• The new building under construction will be of much greater quality than neighboring buildings, and will therefore likely attract tenants with rents roughly 20% above the current “prime” level for the neighborhood.
• Total expenses (operating + vacancy/credit) of a new Swiss office building are 34% of gross rent if the building is professionally managed. Expenses incurred by corporate owners are typically 10% higher. This can be calculated not as 44% of the rent, but rather (1 + 10%)*(34%*gross rent).
• Property sales brokers charge a 3% commission upon sale.
• Swiss commercial property valuation in Basel is approximately 80% structure and 20% land. The depreciable life of Swiss property is 20 years. You may not depreciate land in Switzerland.

Part 1. Renew Current Leases, Move and Consolidate, or Buy New HQ?

Based on the information provided in the case study and DCF analysis for each option, do you recommend for Drechtal to (1) continue leasing as-needed and renew their current leases, (2) move and consolidate employees in leased space, or (3) acquire their own corporate headquarters?

• Discuss your rationale based on considerations, for example, with regard to the long-term strategy, operational needs of the firm, and property market conditions.
• Discuss strategic considerations with regard to the financing options.
• Discuss any relevant financial considerations raised by DCF analysis for each option. For the DCF, use the information provided in the case study and conduct analysis on an after-tax basis (Assume a 10-year holding period where any property purchased is sold at the end of 10-years).

Part 2. Evaluate the Opportunity Cost With Respect to the Core Business

Work through sensitivity analysis that considers different rates of return on investments and growth for the core business. How is your answer in Part 1 impacted by potential changes in Drechtal’s core business? (Hint: what happens when you adjust the dividend rate and annual growth rate on Drechtal’s investment in their core business?)

Facility location decisions can provide organizations with a competitive advantage and, therefore, must be an integral part of their overall strategic plans. The effectiveness of a supply chain is greatly influenced by facility locations. Increased globalization and improved technologies have resulted in a variety of options for companies to locate their facilities. Today, companies must consider a number of factors when analyzing potential locations; several comparison methods are available when considering the country, region, and community for a facility location. Business clusters often provide for strong business development, collaboration, growth opportunities, and improved supply chain management. The existence of successful clusters suggests that innovation and competition are concentrated geographically. China today represents an attractive location for many of the world’s top companies due to its inexpensive labor and huge market. There has been much discussion about sustainable development and the greening of the supply chain and its effect on global location decisions. Finally, emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing or 3D printing will have a major impact on how companies view manufacturing and where they locate production facilities.

1. What is the impact of facility decisions on a supply chain?
2. Why is demand management important for effective supply chain management?
3. What are business clusters? Provide several examples of business clusters in a variety of countries. What are the advantages of clustering?
4. What are the factors influencing facility location?
5. Discuss the major regional trade agreements in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
6. What is the World Trade Organization and what is its role in world trade?
7. What are the critical factors in making community and site decisions?
8. Discuss Walmart’s location strategy.
9. Discuss Amazon’s global facilities network.
10. Define quality of life. Why is quality of life an important factor in facility location? Is the set of quality-of-life factors used by the Chamber of Commerce in Jacksonville, Florida, a good one? Please explain.
11. What is a right-to-work state? What are the advantages or disadvantages of doing business in a right-to-work state?
12. Why is China an attractive location for many businesses?
13. What are the challenges of doing business in China?
14. Discuss the six strategic roles of a foreign facility.
15. What is sustainable development, and why is this policy important to a country and the world at large?
16. What is the difference between green development and sustainable development?
17. Explain why 3D printing may lead to a revival of manufacturing in the United States.
18. Provide examples of major U.S. companies that are using 3D printing and explain why they are reshoring their manufacturing back to the United States?
19. Go to the website of IMD—World Competitiveness Yearbook at http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-index/#topic=data. Select any region of the world such as Africa and Middle East, Americas, Asia and Pacific, and Europe and Eurasia. Prepare a report showing the regional highlights and include a performance overview of selected countries in the region.
20. Go to the World Economic Forum website at http://www.weforum.org/. Select “Initiatives” from the top menu. Then select “Shaping the Future of Production.” Based on the articles presented in the website, prepare a report discussing how emerging technologies will transform production systems, business models, and sustainability.
21. Go to the website of the World Trade Organization at www.wto.org. Click on the menu item “Documents, data, and resources” and select the option on “Economic research.” Under “Publications” select the latest World Trade Report. Explain the key findings of the report and the changing landscape of international trade and the emergence of global value chains.
22. Go to the website of the U.S. Commercial Service at https://www.export.gov/ccg. First, select a country you wish to study. Based on the country commercial guide, prepare an assessment of the suitability of the country for doing business in the particular industry you wish to study.
23. Go to the website http://www.reshorenow.org/ and prepare a report on why U.S. companies should move manufacturing back to the United States.