Analysis of Royal Dutch Shell: Business Strategy and Objectives

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Royal Dutch Shell, examining its mission, vision, purpose, and objectives. It explores how information from various documents, such as annual reports, codes of practice, and strategic plans, can be used to understand the company's direction and targets. The report details the process of conducting a situational analysis, including the identification of internal and external factors impacting the organization. It also identifies and explains legal issues, ethical practices, and strategic directions. Furthermore, it evaluates previous marketing strategies, assesses profitability, and conducts a competitive analysis. The report also covers marketing objectives, stakeholder involvement, and key performance indicators, concluding with an overview of financial risks and a bibliography of cited sources. This analysis provides valuable insights into the company's operations and strategic planning.

Analysis of Royal Dutch Shell
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Royal Dutch Shell plc mostly known as Shell,is a British Dutch multinational oil and gas
company.Its headquarters is in Netherlands and its one of the biggest oil and gas company
worldwide and was on the forbes global 500 list in 2016.
Q1. Mission, Vision, Purpose,and Objectives
Mission: They make the difference through our people, a team of dedicated professionals, who
value our customers, deliver on our promises and contribute to sustainable development1.
Vision: To safely market and distribute energy and petrochemical products while offering
innovative value-added services.
Purpose and Objectives: The gas company purposes to engage profitably, efficiently, and
responsibly in gas, chemicals, oil and other related businesses. It also contributes to the
development of alternative energy sources to satisfy consumer needs and meet the increasing
demand for energy2.
Q2. Information from Various Documents and their Significance
Information obtained from documents like annual reports, codes of practice company
policy customer service charter, security and privacy policies, strategic marketing plans and
1 W.L. Fry, and John S. W, "Maximizing the triple bottom line through spiritual leadership." Organizational dynamics
37, no. 1 (2008): 86-96.
2 O. I. Maignan, and Linda F, "A stakeholder model for implementing social responsibility in marketing." European
Journal of Marketing 39, no. 9/10 (2005): 956-977.

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strategic plans is very essential for performance of fuel companies. Annual reports contain
income statements which can be used to tell the company’s financial directions by reviewing the
profits and losses made in that particular fiscal year.Codes of practice company policy customer
service charter document contains consumer rights which help employees to attend to all the
customers without discrimination.Security and privacy policies contain information on how
clients’ credit card information should be handled by the employees. This information would be
used to guarantee customers safety and privacy of their credit card information. Strategic
marketing planscontain goals and strategies of the organization. This information would be used
to come up with the best procedure for promoting brand recognition. Strategic plan in general
contains information on resources that would lead to proper allocation measures.
Q3. Situational Analysis
To conduct a situational analysis, the following steps would be used. The first step would
be to identify a problem affecting the company and developing a problem statement. Coming up
with employee’s shared vision would be the second step followed by conducting a desk review.
Identifying the review’s scope and other relevant information would follow. Next would be to
review the data and organize it. Finally, the last step would be data analysis and summarizing the
findings. The internal factors to be examined would include the location of the fuel store, the
target customers, and the employees. On the other hand, the external factors would include
competition from other fuel companies, legal and technological issues3.
Q4. Legal Issues
3 I. Doole, and Robin. L, International marketing strategy: analysis, development and implementation. Cengage
Learning EMEA, 2008.

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The Royal Dutch Shell must abide by the following three legal issues: financial
transparency, inspection compliance and contracting and procurement laws. Financial
transparency includes disclosing the amount an organization pays to the government to be
allowed to extract natural resources. This legal issue affects Shell company because it gives a
competitive edge to other companies not paying the money. Inspection compliance involves
allowing federal or state inspection as a result of complaint or incident. This issue is important
because it makes the company invest in facilities to protect the public from harm. Finally,
procurement and contracting laws require the organization to adhere to the terms and conditions
of all their agreements. The organization hires a lot of lawyers to abide by these legal issues.
The Royal Dutch Shell abides by the ethical standard of integrity, honesty,and fairness.
The company’s employees treat all customers the same without discrimination.This does not
affect consumer’s expectations since they all expect to be treated fairly and equally.
Q5. Strategic Direction
The company’s strategic direction can be confirmed by comparing the mission statement
to the manager responsible for day to day operations.This is because strategic direction involves
actions that are necessary to achieve strategic goals.
Q6. Evaluation of Previous Marketing Strategies
Evaluating previous marketing strategies is essential for identifying lessons learned. It
could be done by monitoring cost and benefit from previous marketing strategies, long-range
impacts, positioning,and competition. For example, by evaluating how competitors are attracting
customers, the company could come up with new innovative ways of winning over the clients.
Q7. Evaluating Profitability

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The following methods could be used to evaluate profitability and success of previous
marketing endeavors: sales, number of repeat purchases, and customer satisfaction. From sales
reports, profits made in comparison with the year-earlier could be deduced. Comparing the
number of repeat purchases would be a clear indication of the success of the current marketing
strategies. Finally, customer satisfaction could be evaluated from reviews made by the clients.
Q8. Competitive Analysis
The competitive analysis would be essential in evaluating performance and identifying
critical success factors4. For example, after research on competing for fuel companies and
realization that the competitors are using Facebook to market their organization, Royal Dutch
Shell may use Pinterest or Instagram since social media advertising would have been the success
factor.
Q9. Assessing Viability of Marketing Opportunity
Competitive analysis is where Shell identifies its competitors and does an evaluation to
determine their strengths and weaknesses as compared to your own products and services. A
marketing opportunity can be deemed as viable if it would give a firm competitive advantage
over others. For example, if celebrity advertising is not common in the industry, a company
incorporating the strategy would have more success in brand awareness.They should use this
strategy to beat theitr competitors.
4 S. W. He and Ling. L,. "Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry."
International Journal of Information Management 33, no. 3 (2013): 464-472.

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Q10. Marketing Objectives
One marketing objective of Royal Dutch Shell is to expand its sale to international
economies. This scope can be affected by competitors (external factor) like the British Oil
company that is larger. The cost of expanding the firm might be relatively higher since the
branches would be in international countries. However, the overall profits might be high due to
economies of scale. Risks may include competition and lack of loyalty from foreign consumers.
This goal might be promoted through celebrity and social media advertising because of
increased popularity and brand awareness. It may also be inhibited by hostile potential clients
and stiff competition in the international borders.
Q11. Marketing Opportunity
One marketing opportunity could be the desire to increase oil and gas prices. The positive
outcome on the business would be higher profits. The customer base would also enjoy better
quality service since the firm would be in a position to afford the services. On the other hand, the
firm might lose its clients to a cheaper competitor. The customer base may also fail to afford the
new prices.
Q12. Stakeholders in Making Objectives
CEO, Board Members, Human Resource Manager
Q13. Objectives
Future Objective: To develop an alternative source of energy that is sustainable.
Current Objective:To maintain and win more customers. It does not contribute to the future
objective because there is no other alternative for customers to turn to.

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Intermediate Objective:To provide safe and environmentally friendly oil products for the
customer. This objective is consistent with the future one because they both emphasize on
alternative sources that do not pollute the environment.
Q14. Capabilities: The availability of resources to start and maintain the marketing strategy.
Without these resources, the company cannot afford the cost of marketing.
Resources: Financial ability. Without these resources, the company cannot afford the cost of
marketing.
Financial Position:A company’s assets and liabilities.
Q15.
Royal Dutch Shell purposes to compete ethically and fairly. This objective is compatible
with the legal and ethical competition standards by ensuring that there are no wrongful
advertisements or misleading of customers.
Q16. Key Performance Indicators
The objective Royal Dutch Shell companies is to engage effectively, responsible and
profitable in the energy industry and to participate in the search for coming up with other energy
sources.The company wants to provide high standards of performance and aim to maintain a
long-term position in their competitive environment.
Long-term strategic objectives are formulated by using Key Performance Indicator software
because it can track the products, services, and market segments of the entire business.The
company has a comprehensive corporate information programmes and provide full and relevant

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information about their activities to the interested parties,subject to any overriding considerations
of business confidentiality and cost.
Q17. Financial Risks
An example of financial risk is dependence on one source of revenue.This could be
avoided by investing in other ventures by buying shares from other corporations. However,
buying shares from the same industry is not an advisable method to deal with this risk since an
issue affecting the industry might cripple the firm’s financial position.

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Bibliography
Doole, I. and L. Robin. International marketing strategy: analysis, development and
implementation. Cengage Learning EMEA, 2008.
Fry, L.W. and W. S. John. "Maximizing the triple bottom line through spiritual leadership."
Organizational dynamics 37, no. 1 (2008): 86-96.
He,W. S. and L. Ling. "Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the
pizza industry." International Journal of Information Management 33, no. 3 (2013): 464-
472.
Maignan, I. O. and F. Linda. "A stakeholder model for implementing social responsibility in
marketing." European Journal of Marketing 39, no. 9/10 (2005): 956-977.