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Make or buy decision
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The decision of a company whether to perform an activity itself or to purchase it from an independent firm is known as a make-or-buy decision. Vertical integration demonstrates when a company expands its business into areas that are at different stage of production, or vertical chain, the company is actually considering a make-or-buy decision. For example, a retailer can either choose to buy products from the supplier, or acquires the supplier to produce by itself. Vertical integration can decrease transportation expenses and reduce turnaround time, thus help companies take costs advantage and improve efficiency. However, the key reason for a company to vertically integrate is the market default risk and unreliability.
Customer loyalty is another competitive advantage. Trader Joe’s doesn’t provide membership card to the customer, however customer still would like to choose Trader Joe’s just because of this
Horizontal integration brings organizations under one organization, and system. Vertical integration brings together all or part of a production procedure under one management, the fundamental principle of vertical integration is supplying a set of health care services to satisfy the needs of individuals in a specific group.
The Meaning of Vertical and Horizontal Integration Horizontal integration is where an organisation owns two or more companies, on the same level of the buying chain. An example of this is the First Choice Group; they own First Choice Travel Agency and First Choice Hypermarket, both of which are on the same level of the buying chain. The advantage of horizontal integration is that it can increase the company’s market share. Another good example of this type of integration is when EasyJet purchased the airline Go from British Airways. Now EasyJet and Go both operate under the company name of EasyJet.
This will lower the cost for the customer, keep each company competitive and allow them to keep a high margin. Another cost is the inventory cost for each company. Each company needs major capital to store their broad catalog of products. This is especially true for Fastenal because one of their niches is time of delivery. Since Fastenal has more distribution plants, we as a company are able to get a customer an order in a shorter period of time.
The four companies shown above have very different business models. Inditex owned much of the production and most of its stores. Inditex is thus a vertically integrated company. This made Inditex gain a competitive advantage, which is quick response to the market requirements. On the other hand, The Gap and H&M have a different business model. They owned most of the stores, but outsourced all the production. Benetton had a third business model. It invested heavily in the production, but licensees ran its stores.
It focuses on decisions that do not involve wide scale factors such as government or economic factors building up to the economy. This is a bottom up approach focusing on supplier costs and how the demand and therefore selling price is affected by availability.
In the horizontal integration, the company product range is from a wide clientele. That is they sell product either clothing or luxurious foods from different manufacturers. These give them the edge since the products they offer a variety for the customers to choose from, and hence they can shop less than one roof (Cole, 1997). In the vertical integration strategy, the firm will deal substantial with products from a single supplier and M&S gets the exclusive rights to deal with the product and its supply to the market. This is necessary when the company aim is to serve an identified target market which is exclusive and has the potential to sustain and grow the company substantively. These employ a tar...
According to a North American dictionary entry vertical integration is defined as “merging of companies in supply chain: the merging of companies that are in the chain of companies handling a single item from raw material production to retail sale” (“Vertical Integration,” 2009). Though the definition of vertical integration is quite simple the concept is much more complicated than one may think. There are four strategic factors that must be established by business leaders before the implementation of vertical integration can take place that must be well-thought-out in order to achieve any level of success. The factors that influence vertical integration are economic, market, operational, and strategic.
Organizational structure can be defined as the “formal arrangement of jobs within an organization” (Robbins & Coulter, 2009, p. 185). Having a defined and unified structure helps employees work more efficiently. Jacques Kemp, former CEO of ING Insurance Asia/Pacific, realized this need early on in his role. The company had been performing well and recently acquired another insurance company to become “one of the largest life insurance companies in Asia-Pacific” (Schotter, 2006, p. 4). However, Kemp’s proactive personality led him to seek out ways to achieve more efficient coordination between the regional office and business units (Robbins & Coulter, 2009). Kemp noticed that “most business unit managers did not even know the current corporate standards” and he began searching for a way to manage the managers (Schotter, 2006, p. 5). ING Insurance Asia/Pacific’s organizational structure was mechanistic and fairly well structured, but for a company that had recently been involved in a major acquisition and was divided across 12 geographically dispersed markets there was a great need to tweak this structure to unify the company (Schotter, 2006). If I had been in Kemp’s position as CEO, I would have made modifications to the organizational chain of command, formalized business processes, and used technology to stimulate collaboration amongst the region to help this company overcome organizational design challenges.
The vertical merger happens when a company moves up or down its own product line. The sensible reason for merging with or acquiring a company is that it makes financial sense.
‘Horizontal Merger’ is when two companies with similar products join together. ‘Vertical Merger’ is two companies at different stages in the production process. ‘Conglomerate Merger’ is when two different types of companies join together. ‘Market extension merger’ is between two companies who produce the same product but sell in different markets. ‘Product Extension merger’ is between companies with related production but they do not compe...
Burger King delivers value to their customers through their products, prices, and place and promotion strategies - (“BK doesn’t just promise value, they actually deliver value”). Burger king has been in existence for 60 years and is growing rapidly in many other countries. Burger King delivers quality, great tasting food which satisfies ones need or wants and captures the value of customers even before the first purchase is made. Burger King has products very unique from other competitors such as KFC and McDonalds. The difference is that Burger King does not limit their customers in terms of what they eat. For example, when I spoke to a customer also big fan of Burger King, he mentioned that the sauces are left public for the customer to decide on which sauce to have rather than giving the customer one kind of sauce such as McDonalds and KFC. The cold beverage is also self-help service in which customers can help themselves to a bottomless drink. This way the customer feels free to choose what satisfies the need or want.
Vertical integration is where a company becomes their own supplier or distributor through acquisition. Seprod uses the strategy by their acquisition of Belvedere Estate in 2006 so as to expand its dairy farm pastures to increase their supply of milk output from the dairy farming. They also use vertical integration in their subsidiary Industrial Sales Limited. This is done by making them the main distributer and marketer of their
Because there are few firms in an oligopoly industry, each firms output is a large share of the market. As a result, each firm's pricing and output decisions have a substantial effect on the profitability of other firms. In addition, when making decisions relating to price or output, each firm has to take into consideration the likely reaction of rival firms. Because of this interdependence, oligopoly firms engage in strategic behaviour. Strategic behaviour means when the best outcome of a firm is determined by the actions of other firms.
Vertical integration is the process in which several steps in the production and/or distribution of a product or service are controlled by a single company or entity, in order to increase that company’s or entity’s power in the marketplace. Vertical integration differs across industries, firms within the same industry, and transactions within the firm. A company may expands its operations backward into industries that produces inputs to its products or forward into industries that utilize, distribute or sell it products.