Journal of Business Strategy

If employers are having a hard time finding capable employees today, just wait until tomorrow. Those responsible for recruiting entry-level staff in the 1990s and beyond will have their hands full. Demographic studies show that companies will be hard pressed to find an adequate supply of properly skilled young people from the generation that is about to enter the job market.

Companies must master six specific issues to achieve market leadership in this decade. Successfully applying these six make-or-break issues can shape an organization's marketing strategy and boost its bottom line.

Defining the right product at the right moment is important. But how long it takes to develop and introduce that product can have a dramatic impact on both customer satisfaction and ROI. Here's a metaphorical approach to streamlining the process.

When it come to building new facilities, time is money. Delays cost dollars, blunt your competitive edge, and leave you with a building that's obsolete before it opens. Here's how to use functional programming, process-oriented teams and good planning to keep your project on track and your company on budget.

Forbes magazine had dubbed Carmike Cinemas “the Wal‐Mart of theater chains.” Founded in 1982, the Columbus GA‐based chain of 1,400 screens pursues a strategy strikingly similar to that of Wal‐Mart Stores, Inc. The company buys or builds theaters in small to mid‐sized cities (populations of 200,000 or less) where purchase prices are low and competition is scarce. This unusual approach to the movie retailing business has led to phenomenal growth and strong profitability at a time when other chains are scrambling to sell off theaters and repay debts.

While acquisitions are a popular means of creating shareholder value, almost 50 percent fall short of expectation. This article notes recent acquisition trends, reviews the basic strategic logic, and explores some ways acquiring companies can improve their chances of success.

Marketing factors often explain why mergers and acquisitions subsequently succeed or fail. Here are guidelines for appraising the value of marketing assets of companies that are M&A candidates.

Strategy as a means to attain competitive advantage has evolved rapidly over the last 30 years. Today, it is a dominant lever available to management to implement competitive changes inside their organization. Because strategy is such an important force for action, it is paramount that organizational changes be continually directed by highly reliable, timely information about potential competitive advantages. One method currently proving most useful in directing strategic action is benchmarking.

Managers have largely overlooked computer technology as a valuable resource in creating competitive advantage. To rectify the situation, companies will have to overcome resistance to change, heal the data processing/general management breach, and take a long, hard look at the economic issues involved.

Companies that achieve a very high degree of service quality in their approach to doing business will gain incalculable benefits.

As the personal computer marketplace becomes increasingly competitive and PCs become more of a commodity, computer companies are finding that creating innovative technology alone is no longer enough to succeed. Companies must be viewed as value leaders that are customer‐driven instead of technology‐driven. Customers expect and demand more for their money, which means vendors must not only offer low prices, but also efficient delivery, personalized products and services, and responsive customer support.

No company or industry can afford to be ill equipped to meet the mounting environmental challenges. Here is what some companies are doing.

According to Leon Gorman, president of L. L. Bean, service is a day‐in, day‐out, ongoing, never‐ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity. Given L. L. Bean's position as the service quality leader in its industry, the message is one no marketing executive can afford to ignore. Indeed, every executive's nightmare should be overhearing a customer say one of the following remarks:

As companies move through the stages of their corporate life cycle, many fail to adjust their sales model to meet new business requirements. This article illustrates that problem with a case study of a major telecommunications organization and includes a three-step process that can be used during strategic planning and budgeting.

The business environment for the past quarter‐century has been characterized by increasing competition, decreasing product life cycles, and growth of industrial organizations in terms of both human and physical assets. Coupled with these challenges are increased societal pressures for greater corporate accountability. In order to survive and eventually achieve myriad diverse objectives, decisionmakers are forced to extend planning horizons, introducing even greater levels of uncertainty. Moreover, the typical decision‐maker is further removed from action points, increasing the communications problem and rendering decisive management more difficult.

In these financially constrained times, should your company spend money developing ways to sell your prod-ucts or services to Hispanics? Unless you can afford to overlook a booming $171-billion market, the answer is a resounding yes. The Hispanic market will be even more significant in the coming years; Hispanics are the US's number-one growth market due to high birth and immigration rates.

Too often, long-range environmental forecasting is ignored in order to cut costs. But long-range forecasting can actually reduce costs and win new markets ahead of the competition. For example, Sears removed flammable nightwear and substituted nonflammable nightwear long before government action made this a requirement. S. C. Johnson and Sons eliminated environmentally risky fluorocarbons from its aerosol sprays three years before the government forced competing firms to comply. Both firms were able to reduce substantially their costs of compliance and avoided the criticism from public-spirited groups that was directed toward their competitors.

The author describes the strengths and weaknesses of current systems and reveals how planning can preempt a breach in security.

Let's start with a subject we're all committed to—our children. When my child was very young, my wife and I learned, as do most parents, that there are several approaches to dealing with crying at night. First, you can let a child cry. After all, life is full of ups and downs and terrors of the night. In the business world, we call them by other names—downsizing, layoffs, career plateaus, political hot soup. But kids will have to learn how to deal with them. You can't expect sympathy later, so why expect it now?

There are eight areas in a business plan where energy is often wasted. Here's how to spot the gaps that prevent plans from being put into action.

Strategy has become one of the most overused and misused words in our business vocabulary. Chief executives love to talk about strategy because “it's the thing to do.” Managers love the word because it makes them sound more professional. Planners love “strategy” because it allows them to establish their own unique identity within the corporation. Which managers can stand before their subordinates, peers, or bosses and admit to not having a strategy?

U S WEST, one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies spun off from AT&T in January 1984, reevaluated all aspects of its business from top to bottom--including its corporate culture.