University of Houston Management Essay

1. What are Mattel, Hasbro, and Disney’s KEY resources and capabilities?

2. What are their sources of Competitive Advantage -i.e. those that are rare valuable hard to imitate and that company is capitalizing on (see chapter on the internal environment of lookup VRIO or VRINE on the web).

3. What can Disney offer to Mattel or Hasbro and vice-versa? Who would have the power in the relationship?

4. What type of alliance did Mattel and Disney have? What type of alliance do Hasbro and Disney have now?

5. What could have been/can be Disney’s alternative options?

6. What was the value of Disney’s alliance with Mattel *think beyond the obvious here? What is the value of Disney’s alliance with Hasbro?

7. Why did Disney cancel its princess alliance with Mattel?

8. Why were so many Mattel executives fired recently?

9. What could have Mattel done to retain Disney as a partner?

10. What should Hasbro do to retain Disney as a partner?

11. Should/Could Mattel create a new alliance with Disney? What would it take to convince Disney to come back?

Also, pretend we went back in time and you are Disney’s CEO’s assistant -BEFORE Dinsey decided to switch to Mattel. The CEO comes to you and asks you to write an evaluation of each of the options:

Option 1: Staying with Mattel or

Option 2: Moving to HASBRO.

Your opinion will help the CEO decide to switch or not. Remember that you can suggest something different than what the CEO ultimately decided to do.

Provide a strategic evaluation of the pros and cons of each of these options. BE AS DETAILED AS POSSIBLE -THINK OF ALL pros and cons of each options. Think of the risks associated with each.

MAKE SURE TO PROVIDE A SYNTHESIS with your overall recommendation. It could be different than what the company decided to do. So basically MAKE SURE TO PROVIDE AN EXECUTIVE CONCLUSION: In SOAR – You must tell us which of the two options you would choose and why and tell What dangers you need to watch for and any potential implementation issues.