Choose an industry you have not yet written about in this course, and one publicly traded corporation within that industry. Research the company on its own Website, the public filings on the...

APA Format 6th Edition Template
Running head: BUSINESS AND CORPORATE LEVEL STRATEGY 1
Business and Corporate Level Strategy
Name of the Student
Course Name
University Name
Business and Corporate Level Strategy
Introduction
This paper is done to analyze the various business-level and corporate-level strategies that should be adopted by a firm within an industry to have success in the long-run. Further the major competitor of the company is also analyzed to compare their strategies and help in figuring out which strategy is better. All the analysis is done to compare the reasons behind the success of a firm and what all factors should be considered while choosing a particular strategy
The industry chosen by me is the fast-food industry, and company chosen is one of the leading organizations in the fast-food industry i.e. McDonalds’s. The organization was started in 1955 and since then is serving the markets around the globe successfully.
Business Level Strategies
Michael Porter proposed three “generic” strategies that can be used for competing and outperforming other companies in the same industry: low cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies. These can be performed by any type or size of business organizations.
The low cost leadership strategy is the ability of a company to design, produce, and market a product more cost efficiently than its rival firms.
The differentiation strategy is the ability of a company to market a superior and differentiated product/service to the buyers with respect to the quality, add-on features or after-sales services.
The focus strategy uses both the cost leadership strategy and the differentiation strategy. But the primary focus is on a narrow/niche market. The strategies are known as cost focus and differentiation focus respectively.
Business Level Strategy for McDonalds:
For McDonald’s the focus strategy is not that attractive as the company has an established brand name and serving a niche market would not be a successful strategy. Moreover, the company can use its established name and quality of services provided to serve large markets. Thus, the focus strategy is not that profitable for McDonald’s. To understand which of the two strategies i.e. low-cost leadership or differentiation is better for McDonald’s, a further analysis of the company with these strategies needs to be done.
Cost-Leadership is a low-cost strategy that aims to capture a broad mass market by providing the product/service more efficiently than its competitors. This efficiency can be achieved by constructing efficient-scale facilities, constantly trying to reduce costs from experience, tight control over overheads and costs, and by minimizing costs in areas like sales force, advertising, research and development. By using this strategy, the company will be able to charge a lower price for its product than its competitors and still be able to earn profits. (Wheelan, 2010)
Differentiation strategy aims at creating a product or service that is treated as something unique and superior in the industry. This strategy is also aimed at a broad mass market like cost-leadership strategy. By creating a unique product, the company will be able to charge a premium price for its product. The uniqueness and superiority may be associated with the technology used, brand name and design, features, or customer services. This strategy is extremely useful in earning supernormal profits as the buyers would be less price-sensitive due to the unique product. The increased costs incurred can usually be passed on to the buyers by charging higher prices.
Appropriate Strategy for McDonalds:
Carefully...