In this way, General Motors’ workforce remains adequate in developing solutions to emerging challenges that require new skills and abilities from employees. This feature of the corporate culture addresses employees’ morale issues and their concerns regarding their careers.
(Photo: Public Domain) General Motors Company (GM) has a generic strategy (Porter’s model) that ensures competitive advantage amid increasing competition in the global automotive industry.
However, considering market dynamics and changes in the industry, General Motors must optimize its position. Optimization is key in keeping the company’s position in the global industry. General Motors needs to address the strategic factors determined in this SWOT analysis of the business.
The competitive advantage based on the generic strategy and the growth potential based on the intensive strategies contribute to the long-term success of General Motors. General Motors’ generic competitive strategy is cost leadership.
Thus, General Motors’ strategic objective based on product development is to achieve a high rate of innovation in new product development. Market Development (Supporting). General Motors employs market development as a supporting intensive strategy for growth.
General Motors Company (GM) has a generic strategy (Porter’s model) that ensures competitive advantage amid increasing competition in the global automotive industry . Michael Porter’s model indicates that competitive advantage is created through a generic strategy that the company effectively applies in relation to variables in the target market. In this case, General Motors’ generic competitive strategy emphasizes the benefits of economies of scale, which is one of the company’s strengths (Read: SWOT Analysis of General Motors Company ). The firm also employs intensive growth strategies based on the business effects of such generic strategy. Each intensive strategy contributes to the growth of General Motors. However, these intensive growth strategies have different degrees of significance in the business. For example, General Motors benefits more from one intensive strategy compared to the other intensive strategies in terms of their effects on organizational growth and appropriateness to the target market for automobiles and related products.
Market Penetration (Primary). General Motors uses market penetration as its primary intensive growth strategy. This intensive strategy contributes to the company’s growth by increasing sales in current markets. For example, General Motors expands its market reach by increasing the number of its dealerships. In this way, the distribution of GM automobiles increases, improving customers’ access to these products. General Motors’ cost-leadership generic strategy creates competitive advantage that facilitates the successful implementation of market penetration. Based on this intensive growth strategy, a strategic objective is to continue expanding the company’s distribution network to support business growth and development.
For example, General Motors could acquire a car rental services company in a domestic market to fuel business growth. This intensive growth strategy can contribute new business capabilities to support the differentiation generic competitive strategy.
General Motors’ generic competitive strategy is cost leadership. Based on Porter’s model, this generic strategy creates competitive advantage based on the attractiveness of low costs and corresponding low prices of products. For example, General Motors’ automobiles are offered at prices that are lower than premium or luxury automobiles like Mercedes-Benz. The relatively lower prices attract customers, leading to GM’s competitive advantage. A strategic objective based on this generic strategy is to enhance manufacturing process efficiencies through automation and continuous improvement to support General Motors’ competitive advantage.
Focus on its organizational culture allows General Motors to fulfill its goals and objectives for addressing business performance challenges and issues. The company’s reform efforts view the corporate culture as a contributor to success. This is so because many of General Motors’ problems in performance are linked to its old cultural characteristics that emphasize bureaucracy and lack of accountability. Nonetheless, other factors are involved in determining the actual performance of GM’s business and its effectiveness in addressing internal problems and external challenges.
General Motors Company (GM) uses its organizational culture to support enhancement efforts in the automotive business. The company’s cultural characteristics are significant contributors to the success of reforms aiming to improve industry position. A firm’s organizational or corporate culture defines the traditions, ...
Innovation is a key success factor in the business because of the rapid rate of innovation in the automotive industry. Thus, General Motors benefits from a corporate culture of agility that suits its current business needs and environment. The cultural characteristics of the business are beneficial to GM.
General Motors Company has an organizational culture of agility. This kind of organizational culture focuses on speed in addressing issues, problems and opportunities in the business. For example, the corporate culture enables GM to develop its competitive advantage on the basis of rapid innovation and positive relations with stakeholders, whose interests determine the initiatives and programs in General Motors’ corporate social responsibility strategy. The company must ensure that its cultural characteristics are aligned with goals and objectives, to optimize the success rate of strategic implementation in the automobile market. The following characteristics are notable in General Motors’ organizational culture:
For example, the company maintains human resource programs that develop talent and skills among workers. In this way, General Motors’ workforce remains adequate in developing solutions to emerging challenges that require new skills and abilities from employees. This feature of the corporate culture addresses employees’ morale issues and their concerns regarding their careers. Thus, through this characteristic, General Motors’ corporate culture also attracts high quality talent.
The company believes that this characteristic of the organizational culture is essential to developing competitive advantage. In this regard, innovation and quality are aligned with General Motors’ generic strategy and intensive growth strategies. Also, innovation and quality contribute to the technological advancement of the company’s products . Thus, this feature of the corporate culture reinforces the emphasis on value and technological breakthrough in General Motors’ vision statement and mission statement, respectively. For example, technological advancement is necessary for the company to improve its current industry position, considering the rapid technological innovation among other automotive firms.
Positive relationships are valued in General Motors’ human resources. This characteristic of the organizational culture pertains to the internal and external relationships involving the automotive business. For example, relationships involving General Motors and its customers, suppliers, and dealers are considered.
Another opportunity is to increase General Motors’ market presence in developing countries. For example, the company can offer products other than Chevrolet automobiles in developing countries, as a way of increasing revenues. Integration of advanced computing technologies in automobiles is an opportunity that can improve General Motors’ competitive advantage. Automobile manufacturers’ efforts for rapid innovation make this opportunity significant. Based on this aspect of the SWOT Analysis of General Motors Company, there are significant opportunities for major growth in the international market.
The internal strategic factors that lessen General Motors Company’s organizational growth and development are considered in this aspect of the SWOT analysis . Some of these factors are organizational characteristics that limit employee contributions to the performance of the automotive business. In this case, General Motors has the following weaknesses:
The case of General Motors points to business strengths and weaknesses that determine capabilities in addressing issues and challenges in the automotive industry. For example, the company’s organizational size and network reach support strategic implementation.
General Motors Company’s industry position is a result of efforts to address opportunities and threats, such as the ones shown in this SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis is a model or tool that managers use to identify the most significant internal strategic factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external strategic factors (opportunities and threats). The case of General Motors points to business strengths and weaknesses that determine capabilities in addressing issues and challenges in the automotive industry. For example, the company’s organizational size and network reach support strategic implementation. However, General Motors must address issues related to competition and business bureaucracy. Decision makers must consider the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) factors to ensure proper fit between strategies and GM’s actual business conditions. Such fit facilitates streamlining, effectiveness, and the minimization of success barriers in strategic implementation. Thus, it is essential that General Motors address the internal and external strategic factors facing its business.
A SWOT Analysis of General Motors Company determines the internal and external strategic factors that significantly affect the automotive business. (Image: Public Domain)
Economies of scale contribute to the effective implementation of General Motors’ generic strategy and intensive growth strategies. This strength also empowers the company to maintain competitive advantage based on extent of market reach and production capacity to address market demand. On the other hand, strong brands are a strength that supports General Motors’ competitiveness in terms of customer loyalty and the attractiveness of its automobiles. For example, customers are more likely to have a positive response to GM products compared to relatively unknown new brands. General Motors also has human resource expertise based on the company’s long history of automobile development and manufacture. This strength facilitates the development of new products that can directly compete against automobiles from other large firms, such as Tesla (Read: SWOT Analysis of Tesla Motors, Inc. ). In this aspect of the SWOT analysis of General Motors, business strengths sustain the company’s capabilities as a major competitor in the automotive industry.
These factors are based on industry or market conditions that have unfavorable effects on the firm. General Motors faces the following threats in the automotive industry: High level of competition.
Shanghai – Shanghai GM’s Drive to Green strategy, which was launched in January 2008, is aimed at introducing products that offer better performance, consume less energy and generate lower emissions than vehicles currently on the road.
In this given case-study is explained in bits and pieces about how the GM lost its market share owing to a number of factors.GM is an American based company concentrating on a lot of Brands,models and having a large spread of price-bands.So the market focus failure in GM can be related to its portfolio proliferation and replication, which in return has given the company a set of negative effects on cash flow. On the other hand its competitor companies like Toyota and Honda have acquired a huge market share with a limited portfolio and a large acquisition of the market share. So the purpose of this report is to critically analyse the different strategic levels of GM motors with respect to the coroporate, business and operational level. Also to analyse and identify the capabilities that would allow GM to achieve the lost competitive advantage and regain the market focus.
General motors has the highest number of cars it has already got 95 different types of cars and as aware there are around 18 segments in automobile industry and it has got 3 cars for each segments, that is one thing that only General Motors have been able to achieve, thought it has been criticized by lot for not able to concentrate on any specific segment, but if they concentrate each segment properly and put the hard work in right direction they are bound to succeed.
Though the General Motors is been struggling to make profits in the past few years and it is running out of cash flow still it hold a very high sales market in japan and United states, the problem is that it is not making profits as it is not allowing a lot of cash flow to occur but still it is one of the largest automobile company in the world and it hold a large amount of market share.