Question:

John Taylor is the Strategic Policy Director of ACCESS International, a large marketing company specialising in buying a variety of manufactured products from the USA and Western Europe for re-sale in Africa and in the Middle East. It was acting in the capacity of a large export house. In recent years the company had met strong opposition from other companies who were providing a similar sales service, in particular from the strong manufacturing companies who resented companies such as ACCESS re-selling their products and obtaining profits which they considered to be rightly theirs.

ACCESS International had initiated a number of strategies over the last year in order to minimise their problems. These strategies have varied from seeking a wider range of products to re-sell from a broader supply-base, attempting to have closer collaborative agreements with major suppliers to minimise any potential conflict, and attempting to operate in more markets. None of these strategies has worked.

John Taylor has been asked by the Board of ACCESS International to investigate the reasons for the failure of these strategies.

Required:

(a) Acting in the role of John Taylor, write a brief report to the Board, identifying major reasons why selected strategies might not be successful.

(b) Show the issues that have to be considered before a strategy can be successfully implemented.