Part 1-

Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 500-800 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas. Discuss R&D, marketing, production, and the impact on company financial performance and competitive positioning. The following bullets suggest issues to address.

For this assignment, you will respond to the address the efficacy of decisions made for your team Competition Round 1, the outcomes, and implications for Competition Round 2. This post is an in depth assessment of all decisions made. What have you identified as the key business issues that will impact your product as the result of Competition Round 1 outcomes? How do you plan to adjust the decisions for your product? Prepare to discuss your decisions with the other members of your team. Discuss R&D, marketing, production, and the impact on company financial performance and competitive positioning. The following bullets suggest issues to address.

If you are the COO and did not make product decisions, discuss each of the four areas from the strategic organization level perspective.

As the Vice President of your product please address these questions for the decisions you made in R&D:

• To what degree did your decisions regarding specification of the products serve to attract customer demand? What do you plan for round 2, based on the outcome?
• What level of quality and reliability—mean time between failure (MTBF) did you build into your products and why?
• How did you ensure that the perceived age of the product meets customer demand?
• What was the impact of your R&D decisions on materials cost? What other decisions were impacted by the increase or decrease?

As the Vice President of your product please address these questions for the decisions you made in Marketing:

• Explain your rationale for how you set the price of your products in the marketplace. How did your pricing compare to the competition at the close of the Round? How do you plan to respond in the next round?
• How well did you build customer awareness through promotion, relative to the competition?
• How effectively did you establish a sales force and distribution channels?
• What was your sales forecast strategy for your products and how did you calculate it?

As the Vice President of your product please address these questions for the decisions you made in Production:

• Did you purchase machinery to automate your facilities? Why or why not?
• Did you buy or sell capacity of product lines?
• How did you establish your production schedule for each line?

In conjunction with the COO final Finance decisions, address these questions for the Finance decisions related to your product:

• Did you acquire capital to fund capital expansions?
• How effectively did your company fund operations?
• Did your product decisions contribute to or detract from company performance? Why?
• Given your analysis, what adjustments do you plan for Competition Round 2?

Part 2-

Use your textbook(s), course materials, and Internet sources to, prepare a PowerPoint presentation of 5 slides, 3 info slides, opening slide and reference slide that justifies your strategic decisions for Competition Round 1 and implications for the decisions you are making in Competition Round 2. Your team will need to provide a brief executive summary “state of the business” slide, a synopsis of the key decisions for each product, the reasoning leading to the decisions, an assessment of the results of those decisions and implications for the next round.