The examples of situations that indicates the poor relations that the company suffers from are;The laying off of several staff members as a consequence of a $200 million budgetary deficit (Schwinn,2008;Dine,2009) Negative publicity due to its use of funds The American Red Cross has been faced with a series of allegations that its uses the funds that it has poorly. The mismanagement of funds after the September 11th cast the organization's image in bad light (Briggs,2002)
The fact that it is the name that comes to mind in case of a disaster or any other situation that demands humanitarian assistance means that it enjoys the strongest brand equity among the non-profit organizations. Since 1881, the institution has won trust as well as awareness as America's premier emergency response corporation by branding itself with a suitable slogan which reads "Together, we can save a life" (Chiaravalle & Schenck,2006,p
These weaknesses include; Poor labor relations The American Red Cross has for the last few years been faced with a barrage of allegations on the way that it treats its workers. The examples of situations that indicates the poor relations that the company suffers from are;The laying off of several staff members as a consequence of a $200 million budgetary deficit (Schwinn,2008;Dine,2009) Negative publicity due to its use of funds The American Red Cross has been faced with a series of allegations that its uses the funds that it has poorly
The organization's mission provides them with a sense of purpose and connectedness which allows them to work smoothly (The Forum,2011). A robust and loyal nationwide employee and volunteer database The ability to have a robust volunteer base as well as the ability to mobilize them quickly in order to help people and communities in coping with and recovering from their losses is critical in the operations of the American Red Cross (Sullivan,2010)
One is to develop industry clusters. According to Michael Porter, industry clusters are considered to be a key to regional economic competitiveness (Waits, 2000)
The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of Verizon are the basis of this analysis. Strengths Verizon continues to have a commanding market presence globally with one of the most profitable brands in the telecommunications industry (Brown, 2010)
Verizon continues to aggressively and successfully pursue an inorganic growth strategy by concentrating on mergers and acquisitions to bring greater cloud-based innovations to their customers (Gorski, 2005). Verizon continues to also seek out opportunities to define advanced e-commerce encryption standards globally, looking to become the global e-commerce platform at the infrastructure level for enterprises (Everett, 2012)
4B acquisition of Terremark (Ya, 2011). Verizon continues to aggressively and successfully pursue an inorganic growth strategy by concentrating on mergers and acquisitions to bring greater cloud-based innovations to their customers (Gorski, 2005)
Another significant strength of Verizon is their ability to orchestrate and complete alliances, mergers and questions quickly. They have also been one of the few telecommunications companies to pioneer the development of effective shared-risk mergers that drastically reduce the downside risk of being an industry consolidator, a role they continue to take on globally (Peaks, Arbogast, O'Keefe, 2009)
They have also been one of the few telecommunications companies to pioneer the development of effective shared-risk mergers that drastically reduce the downside risk of being an industry consolidator, a role they continue to take on globally (Peaks, Arbogast, O'Keefe, 2009). The well orchestrated acquisition of Alltel by at&T that Verizon played a central role in is a case in point (Seidenberg, 2002)
An example of this strength is the company's recent $1.4B acquisition of Terremark (Ya, 2011)
The strength of their brand has given the company the ability to manage customer churn more effectively than competitors, reducing the relative churn rate of customers by 56% over the last three years while competitors have seen churn rates increase by over 67% (Verizon Investor Relations, 2012). The combination of the Verizon brand stability and customer loyalty has given the company a unique level of stability in a very turbulent global telecommunications market (Zoakos, 2002)
The third significant strength is the unique market valuation algorithm that Zillow has created and continues to refine over time. The approach to market valuation fo homes can now be done automatically for entire zip codes and regions in real-time through the use of advanced programming and integration to database systems (Haseeb, 2012)
The company was incorporated in December, 2004 in Washington, and has as its mission " to build the most trusted and vibrant home-related marketplace to empower consumers with information and tools to make smart decisions about homes" (Zillow Investor Relations, 2012). Zillow has quickly established itself as the market standard for real estate market search engines and is a growing force in the area of mortgage advice and management (Lantz, 2012)
Weaknesses Scalability and reliability of data have continued to be challenging aspects of the Zillow operations strategy, including the heavy reliance on single-instance servers and pervasive use of single tenancy Cloud architectures (Lantz, 2012). At one point the quality problems with data management and cloud-based virtualization strategies at Zillow were so significant the company had to completely redefine their it architecture (McDonald, 2006)
This strength is also setting the foundation for future analytics and data mining products and services that can scale across mortgage companies and large-sale real estate investment trusts who are interested in tracking inflated vs. deflated market prices (Schintler, Istrate, 2011)
Toyota launched an extensive internal audit of their own to determine the factors surrounding the recalls and learned that specific factories had taken shortcuts and at one point had not performed supplier audits of incoming components in well over two months (Minhyung, 2010). Internally Toyota had lost sight of its core values of product quality within the plants that had been the catalyst of the faulty products being produced that led to the globally embarrassing vehicle recalls (Johar, Birk, Einwiller, 2010)
Despite the recalls that occurred in the 2010 and 2011 timeframe, Toyota continues to reinvest in and continually look for how they can best improve worldwide Total Quality Management (TQM) performance, taking into account House of Quality, Lean Six Sigma and quality functional management initiatives, all aimed at increasing the reliability of their vehicles by driving up the quality levels of suppliers (Takahashi, 2010). Toyota launched an extensive internal audit of their own to determine the factors surrounding the recalls and learned that specific factories had taken shortcuts and at one point had not performed supplier audits of incoming components in well over two months (Minhyung, 2010)
The strengths that Toyota has in R&D is also seen in how well the company manages its diverse series of technologies, ranging from small, highly efficient internal combustion engines, to the large-scale truck and commercial vehicle engines and the latest advanced in hybrid technologies (Toyota Investor Relations, 2012). The R&D prowess of Toyota is very significant and is considered among the most advanced throughout the global automotive industry today (Rechtin, 2010)
com, 2007). Strength: Dunkin' Donuts coffee is recognized as being extremely high quality (Crown, 2007; Symonds, 2004)