Instructions

Paper to be at least 20 pages in length

APA format

16-20 sources (mix internet sources, books, and peer reviewed sources)

Assignment Brief

This is the Assignment 1,and make sure to focus on the
the company assigned for you.  Add more numbers and data to support
the analysis, and add at least 7 charts and tables.

External Environment
Identify and describe the key trends and forces affecting the industry; these may be categorized
in separate subsections corresponding to the PEST analysis framework. Identify specific
opportunities and threats faced by firms in the industry resulting from these trends. In general,
these factors (particularly P, E, and S) are specific to a country or region that serves as the company’s primary customer market and/or base of operations. If your company is globally
diversified, focus your analysis on its primaryregional markets and/or markets that are most
relevant to the strategic problem that frames your
analysis. You are better off to focus on one or two national markets, if possible, to keep the
scope of this section manageable. Note the PEST analysis is oriented toward the industry
overall, not just your specific company. In this section, we want to understand how these trends
are likely to affect industry competition and profitability, not just whether they exist. Be specific
about how you expect these trends to affect your
industry of interest. In all cases, you must provide quantitative data accessed from credible
sources that describe the relevant trends researched. Some general guidelines:

• Political / Legal: consider recent changes in laws or regulations affecting the industry. Consider
factors related to changes or instability in political regimes, such as taxes, trade, lobbying,
regulatory philosophy, etc. Regulations more than a couple years old are typically not relevant as
most firms will have already adapted. Relevant quantitative data may be more difficult to come
by for this section, though you should reference expert opinion from credible news sources
regarding political factors and consequences. You may offer brief background on government
agencies overseeing the industry but include for purpose of providing relevant
context only.

• Economic: be very selective about the macroeconomic factors you find most relevant. Do not
randomly dump in every economic indicator you can download data for. Think critically about
what indicators are most relevant for your particular industry and be able to explain why. GDP
trends are easy to find and interpretation is often superficial at best. There are typically much more precise measures available with greater relevance to specific industries; e.g., the
percentage a specific industry contributes to overall GDP may be more appropriate. For all
factors analyzed, provide at least five years of historical data; where relevant, feel free to use
forecast data from credible sources as projections of possible future trends. Access original data
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only from credible (i.e., government) sources and avoid using data from third-party aggregator
websites. Wherever possible, download data in numerical format and create your own charts
(e.g., using Excel or similar) to ensure consistent formatting. As a rule of thumb, tabular,
numerical data is almost always best presented in graphical (instead of tabular) format.

• Socio-cultural: depending on your industry context, you may seek to identify relevant
demographic trends (e.g., census data), consumer behavior (e.g., habits or expenditure
categories), or attitudes (e.g., survey response data). Demographic data is often available
through government census records (depending on the country or region you are researching),
though available only in coarse increments (e.g., every 5 or 10 years); as such, plan to collect at
least 20-30 years of historical demographic data to display trends. Data on behavior is often
available through market research reports (Library resources to be discussed in detail during
week 2 class) or through other economic indicators. Attitude data is often available through
various third-party professional pollsters or market researchers; best if you can find survey data
that asks the same question over a period of several years, better illustrating trends.

• Technological: your focus here should be on emerging trends, not ongoing trends.
Technological developments that have been underway over more than a year or two are “old
news” to business strategists. The trends that are most relevant to an industry are not necessarily those that are directly developed within the industry; more often disruptive
technologies come from other industries and are adopted within an industry or create a new
substitute category. When discussing an important technology trend, be sure to obtain and
display data that supports your assessment of the potential impacts of the trends (e.g., reduced
costs, increased productivity, shifts in demand); avoid the tendency say things like “AI is going to
be huge” without explaining in detail how it will directly impact your industry and/or providing
empirical data to support your assessment. To conclude this section, provide a brief summary
(one paragraph and/or a summary table) of the most important factors/trends you have analyzed
in the above section.