Arden University BUS6002: Strategic Management Report on Twitter

This report provides a detailed analysis of Twitter's strategic management, examining its approach to strategy formulation, including deliberate and emergent strategies. It explores the importance of strategic management development for the company, particularly in the face of intense competition from rivals like Facebook and Instagram. The report critically analyzes Twitter's competitive environment using Porter's Five Forces model, highlighting competitive rivalry, threats of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, and threats of substitute products. A VRIO analysis is conducted to assess Twitter's valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organizationally exploited resources. The current strategies of Twitter are critically analyzed, and the SAF strategic model is applied to provide a comprehensive understanding of the company's strategic position. The report concludes with key findings and recommendations for Twitter's strategic direction, providing insights into the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the dynamic social media landscape. The report aims to offer a thorough understanding of Twitter's strategic challenges and opportunities.

Strategic Management

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Approaches of strategy formulation............................................................................................3
Importance of strategic management development.....................................................................5
Critically analyse competitive environment faces Twitter..........................................................5
VRIO Analysis of Twitter Inc.....................................................................................................7
Critically analyse current strategies of Twitter..........................................................................10
SAF Strategic model..................................................................................................................14
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................16

INTRODUCTION
Strategic management is very necessary for an organisation to achieve different
organisational goals and targets in the decided time period. Currently there are very high
competition in each sector or industry, in which businesses should be used some productive and
effective business strategies for properly dealing with this highly competitive market. Basically,
there are strategic management is the only way to different companies and businesses for gaining
productive and effective strategies. Without strategic management no business can easily survive
in this dynamic and modern world. This report discusses strategic management of Twitter. It is a
popular social networking site and app that provides social networking services in all around the
world. Currently headquarter of Twitter is situated in San Francisco, United States. There are
some useful models also has been in this report for deeply analysing strategic management of
this organisation.
MAIN BODY
Approaches of strategy formulation
There are Twitter uses both strategy in its business environment deliberate and emergent,
because it is necessary to company of systematically managing its various business techniques
and tactics (Manyaeva, Piskunov and Fomin, 2016). Basically, top-level management of
company always need to make a specific plan for using deliberate strategy, because with the
support of this strategy this company can formulate other business strategies. There are both
deliberated and emergent strategies has been discussed below with their key limitations.
Deliberated Approach
This is very useful approach or strategy for different organisations, because with the
support of this approach any organisation can easily gain some productive business strategies
and tactics. Currently Strategic management is very necessary task to Twitter, in which with the
support of this social networking company can easily manage its various business strategies.
Basically, this approach contributes on allocation of resources and alignment of organisation. In
this situation, Twitter can take lots of advantages through deliberated approach. There are
adopting this approach in daily operations is not a small task to a business or company, because

mostly businesses are required to use effective strategy makers for easily adopting this approach
in daily operations. On the other side, deliberated approach contributes in providing a productive
framework of decision-making as well. In this situation, this attribute of approach can support to
upper management of Twitter for taking some productive decisions towards developing such
strategies which provide it the best competitive advantage in the international social networking
industry (Lee, Chan and McNabb, 2017). There are some key limitations of deliberated approach
has been discussed below;
Limitations
 Implementation of this approach is very expensive to a business.
 This approach highly consumes precious resources and time of an organisation.
Emergent Approach
Emergent approach is another useful approach in the terms of strategic management.
According to different business experts, this strategy mainly helps in analysing actual demands
and wants of people or customers in the market. Basically, by considering this strategy in daily
operations, upper management of Twitter can be easily understood that, what people actual want
in the market. So that, with the support of this information, Twitter will be able to develop such
features, specifications and attributes in its site and app which can highly attract lots of new
people towards this social networking company. On the other side, by using this emergent
approach, Twitter can be capable to make its app’s interface too better than Facebook and many
other competitors (Schilling and Shankar, 2019). From the recent few year, Twitter is providing
prime news and headlines also to different user on its site and app, in which this feature is also
company has added with the support of emergent approach. Currently most users of Twitter
really like this news and headline feature of its app. That’s why Twitter should be always
considered this emergent approach also in its strategic management processes.
Limitations
 Emergent approach is completely unpredictable, so that Twitter never be planned.
 Not much favourable to the newly established ventures.

Importance of strategic management development
Development of strategic management is very important to Twitter. Reason is, when this
social networking company develop strategic management in its busines environment, then it
will be achieved such tactics and strategies which can provide huge profit at the international
level. Currently Twitter is highly required to formulate some productive business strategies for
gaining huge competitive advantage in the social networking market. Of course, Twitter is one of
the leading social networking companies, currently many new entrants are coming in the social
market regularly due to digitalisation. Basically, there are Facebook, Instagram and Snap-Chat
some major competitors of Twitter which are giving very tough competition to this company in
the market (Hartono and Sheng, 2016). So that, upper management of company is highly
required to use some productive strategies by for easily dealing with this competitive market.
According to these all mentioned factors, Twitter should always develop its strategic
management for gaining better outcomes in the market.
Critically analyse competitive environment faces Twitter
Porter’s five force model
It is a strategic management tool that is properly dependent on the competitive analysis.
This model is designed to identify intensity of competition in business industry. This model
supports to raise strategic options which helps to gain competitive advantage in market. It
comprises five forces such as threats of new entrants, competitive rivalry, bargaining power of
suppliers, bargaining power of buyers and threats of new entrants. This strategic management
tool is used to analyse intensity of competition for the Twitter in it’s social networking sector.
The model is mentioned below as follows:
Competitive Rivalry (High)
From the past few years, the social media sector has been become more successful in
respect of financial profit. Just because of this many new players such as Twitter, Instagram,
Myspace etc. has been led highest competition in the sector. However, there are most of players
has been failed to reach strong fan base like Twitter due to extensive entry of barriers in the
social networking industry. This industry is constantly undertaking in technician advancement as
well as additional of new features which attracts people effectively towards social networking.

There are numerous websites that are constantly adding advanced features to influence users
from competitor’s social media to onto their platform. There are various small players who have
ability to enter in the social media industry through giants which proves supportive to influence
the fan base of the platform (Asuquo and et.al., 2019). So, it denotes currently Twitter is facing
strong competitive rivalry which can impact it’s fan base adversely as well as can take toll on the
entire long-term profitability of the company.
Threats of new entrants (Low)
To get success of a player requires different level of innovation and technology, number
of users and it’s experience. However, when a new enter in this sector then needs different type
of technology, web development and application development and that must not costly which
denotes that entry is quite difficult as compared existing players. If there is discussed about
exiting players like Twitter that already have established strong brand image and brand loyalty
in the social network industry due to it’s advanced features and technology. It has involved
almost all channels like businesses, news channels, individuals etc. on it’s Twitter account and
it’s like can be seen in all organization’s official websites and allows visitors to communicate
with them on Twitter. All of these advancement of Twitter Inc raises the entry barrier for the new
player’s success and creates difficulty for them which makes this threat very low for the Twitter
company. So, weak threat of new entrants raises opportunities for the company to influence it’s
fan base by offering them advanced features which does not expect by competitors and users as
well.
Bargaining power of suppliers (High)
Limited availability of technical suppliers has increased bargaining power because all
companies who associated with social networking industry purchase raw material from them. So,
they have power to reduce profit margin of social networking companies like Twitter Inc. which
can earn from market. Technical suppliers in technology sector can use negotiating power
increasing price from the organization associated with internet information providers because
they are in dominant position (Bashir and Verma, 2017). Thus, higher bargaining power of
suppliers can directly impact on overall profitability of Twitter Inc which can act as threat.
Bargaining power of buyers (High)

Twitter Inc. have different type of buyers such as businesses and marketers who advertise
their ads on Twitter by paying Twitter. As same there are other social media channels and other
internet websites that runs advertisement through funds. Although, Twitter Inc does not have any
defined positioning to increase prices of ads and gain high revenue. High availability of internet
information providers has increased bargaining power of buyers and they choose that social
platform which offers large discounts and offers (Boyle and Zuegner, 2017). On the other hand,
in the case of Twitter Inc. switching cost of buyers is very lower, so buyers of Twitter Inc. have
high bargaining power on it. It is major threat for the Twitter Inc. that can reduce overall
profitability of the busines in it’s sector.
Threats of substitute products or services (High)
There are various number of substitutes like Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat,
Google etc. in the social media industry. These all organizations have already established string
customer base on their platform as well as influences their large market share. However, Twitter
Inc. gives limit to the number of characters which can be posted in a tweet while it’s substitute
companies does not keep any limitation so that are at advantage. There is another limiting
number of hours whereas a user can give limited number of hours of each social media platform.
Thus, these all makes the threats of substitutes are too high for the Twitter Inc. in it’s sector.
VRIO Analysis of Twitter Inc.
VRIO analysis is also a strategic management framework that supports to determine
different resources which can helps organization to lead competitive advantage in it’s business. it
is also known as business analysis framework because it efficiently evaluate all resources which
company uses to run it’s business (Dombrowski, Krenkel and Wullbrandt, 2018). With this
business analysis framework organization enable to gain better positioning itself in the
competitive market. This strategic management framework is used for the Twitter to analyse it’s
business resources. The model is mentioned below:
Valuable Resources
Twitter is American microblogging and social networking company which offers
different type of services like post updating, tweeting, advertisement and others to people. It
provides worldwide services to the user whereas they can post and communicate with message in

the form of tweets. So, organization has more valuable resources like strong presence, large
audience, strong financial strengths, technological innovation, wide product range, brand
awareness and effective organizational culture and HRM which helps organization to generate
high revenue in it’s business. For example, Twitter Inc. has strong popularity and targeted
audience from emerging markets have influenced growth in revenue from last few years. Strong
global accessibility of company is a major source competitive advantage that influences
marketers and businesses to use this platform for the promotion and marketing of products and
services (Frynas and Yamahaki, 2016). Even businesses can promote it’s products and services
at global to it’s targeted audience in any part of world uses Twitter. So, in term of presence,
Twitter’s capabilities are matchless for competitors. Thus, it all valuable resources helps
company to gain competitive advantage.
Rare Resources
The rare resources of the Twitter Inc. are global presence, large audience, customer base
financial strength, technological innovation, product range, brand awareness and organizational
culture & human resource management which helps organization to gain sustainable competitive
advantage. For example, organizational culture and HRM is rare resource of the Twitter Inc.
because it is an innovative social networking technology organization. From initial days it is
famous for it’s extraordinary focus on HRM and organizational culture. in addition, organization
applies non-financial measures to motivate it’s staff members, increases retention rate and
attracts high talented and skilled people towards organization by offering attractive incentives
and career development initiatives (Griniece and et.al., 2020). Highly innovative management of
the Twitter Inc. has maintained wellbeing of individuals within workplace and has led highest
level of self-actualization in them for the job. It is main driving resource of the company that
helps to gain all competitive advantage in best possible way.
Imitable Resources
Twitter Inc. doe not have such resources which can be imitate by competitors because all
are resource are quite different from each other which can generate but cannot copy by others.
for example Brand awareness is very high without any question so organization mainly focuses
on users experience instead of creating awareness in people for it’s social platform. Twitter Inc.

have engaged all high-class audience such as all Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities, potential
politicians, potential businessman, marketers and general users as well which influence it’s brand
image in the social networking market (Gustavsson and Johansson, 2016). Higher brand
awareness has increased worldwide sales and leads faster growth in advertising revenue.
Generally, organization also invest some funds in marketing to increase it’ customer base and
improves engagement of them on it’s social media site. All of these helps company to retain
competitive position in internet information providers industry. In addition, Twitter Inc. also
invest some funds in CSR activities and sustainability to maintain it’s social image stronger
rather than it’s competitors.
Organizational Resources
Technological innovation, product range, financial strengths, product range,
organizational culture and HRM are well organized resources which helps company to achieve
competitive advantage in it’s sector. Theses resources also supports to maintain global presence,
brand awareness and large audience on it’s social media platform. For example, Twitter Inc. has
strong financial position that allows to invest more funds on research and development
department and marketing as well as sales. Organization gives heavy focus on R&D in order to
keep constant improvement on it’s existing products and makes them attractive and highly
engaging. Organization spends large amount o economy on it’s marketing and sales. As same it
spends more funds on R&D in order gain sustainability in competitive market (Muangsornkhiaw,
Nilnoppakun and Sungrugsa, 2018). Twitter Inc. achieves sustainability all of it’s revenue
through digital ads. So, organization become one of the leading competitive company of the
Facebook, Google and it’s huge part of it’s digital ads revenue is generated through mobile
channels. It denotes organization has well organized financial strengths which helps company to
gain competitive advantage in it’s sector.
From above discussion about resources of company can be analysed that Twitter Inc. has
highly strong resources which helps organization to gain both temporary and sustainable
competitive advantage within business market. There are some other resources like financial
strength, organizational culture & HRM and strong global presence supports to achieve all long-
term and short-term goals within timeframe. Innovative technology and wide product range
brings competency in organization’s activities and makes it more successful to maintain

sustainable competitive positioning in social media platform industry. Overall all resources helps
to gain well-recognized brand image business in global market which does not get any impact
from entry of new entrants or competitors products.
Critically analyse current strategies of Twitter
Twitter Inc is a social networking company that has strong brand awareness in the global
market. The current strategies are porter’s generic strategic model and Tows matrix are current
strategies that implement by organization to improve it’s customer base and competitive
advantage in it’s competitive market.
Porter’s generic model
It is a strategic model that is used to achieve competitive advantage in the business sector.
It comprises three strategies like cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategy. Twitter Inc.
uses this framework to gain competitive advantage by implementing strategy effectively.
Cost leadership:
This strategy helps organization gain high market share by offering it’s products at lower
cost. With this strategy organization become low cost market leader in it’s sector and gain large
customer base. The reason behind is that price factor is most effective factor that impacts on
customer’s buying behaviours (Peng and Vlas, 2017). For example, if organization offers it’s
products at lower cost that attracts customers to buy products. As same with another case when
organization offers it’s product at higher cost that reduces customer’s buying decision. With this
strategy organization is not enable to generate high revenue and large market share but also
brings competitive advantage.
Differentiation
It is another effective strategy of porter’s generic strategy model whereas it emphasizes
on differentiation. In other word, this strategy helps organization to differentiate it’s products and
brand through innovation. With this strategy organization mainly targets on large market and
focus on diversification at wider scale within it’s industry instead low-cost leader company. So,
these organizations mainly invest high funds on R&D department so that they get wide variety

products and gets advancement in it’s existing product which attracts customers towards
company rather than competitors.
The major drawback of the both above strategy is that these strategies are only applicable
for wide scale businesses because it requires strong financial strengths then organizations enables
to innovate it’s products or can offer it’s product at lower cost. But these strategies does not
applicable for small scale businesses.
Focus strategy
This strategy is focused on both lower cost advantage and product differentiation. This
strategy is specially designed for those businesses which does not large capital and operates at
small scale (Puschmann and et.al., 2016). This strategy supports small scale businesses to gain
competitive advantage by developing low cost product in large quantity and strong brand image
in competitive market by developing innovative featured products and services. The major
drawback of the strategy is that this strategy is beneficial only on small scale but on large scale
organization unable to gain high level competitive advantage in it’s market.
Twitter Inc. uses cost leadership strategy to gain competitive advantage in the internet
information providers. With this strategy organization enables to improve purchasing behaviour
of marketers and promotional ads in it’s sector and also attracts other new potential marketers to
connect it’s own social media platform rather than others. Thus, organization enable to generate
highest sales revenue from it’s users. But organization gets negative impact as well such as it
allows marketers to promote it’s products ads at lower cost which causes in initial time it have to
face financial loss within business.
Apart from this strategy organization has strategic option to choose differentiation strategy that
helps company differentiate it’s brand and it’s services from competitors in the competitive
market as well as improve large customer base (Remane and et.al., 2017). Twitter Inc. can give
high advancement in existing application to users which makes them more engaging in it’s social
media platform rather other social networking platform. So, organization can use this strategy as
well to gain competitive advantage and differentiate it’s brand image in it’s sector prolong time.
TOWS Matrix

It is a analytical tool that is used to analyse external and internal situation of the business.
it is another current strategy of Twitter Inc. that is applied by organization to determine it’s
internal and external strengths, opportunities’ and threats so that can get effective strategy
(Topçu, 2018).
Internal strengths
 Strong brand image
 Has good market
value and popularity
 The major strength is
that it connects
common man to
celebrities and
businesses
Internal weaknesses
 Low retention rate
 No new innovation
features
 Data safety issues
External opportunities
 Can offer support
activities for
companies
 High customer service
offering for
companies
 Constantly
improvement in user
experience
S-O (Recommendation)
 Support activities for
the businesses will
prove helpful to build
strong global presence
worldwide.
 It has strong market
value that will support
to attract other
potential firms so
organization can use
this customer service
offering opportunity
that will improve
selling revenue of
company.
 It can provide
advanced features to
W-O (Recommendation)
 High supporting
activities for the
organization will
improve retention of
customers on it’s
social media platform
 Twitter Inc. must
invest high funds on
R&D department that
will improve customer
service and overcome
it’s weakness.
 To offer high level of
safe application in it’s
social media sites will
overcome data safety
issue and will lead

direct accessibility
that will improve
customer experience.
improvement in
customer’s
experience.
External threats
 It has fake account
and hacking incidents
 High competitors
 Innovative upcoming
social media
organizations
S-T (Recommendation)
 If organization will
take safety measures
that will overcome
threats of fake and
hacking incident and
will improve brand
image.
 If organization
maintain market value
and popularity
effectively then does
not get any negative
impact from
competitors.
 It provides
accessibility to
common person to
celebrities and
tycoons so there has
very weak barrier to
entry of new entrants.
W-T (Recommendation)
 If twitter Inc. will
invest huge funds on
R&D then will easily
overcome
effectiveness of
threats.
 Differentiation
strategy will support
to gain competitive
positioning in
business market.
If organization adapts all above strategies in it’s organization then can deal with all current issues
successfully as well as it can differentiate it’s brand from competitors.

SAF Strategic model
It is a strategic model that helps to formulate a best strategy for the organization based on
the current situation. it was proposed by Gerry Johanson and Kevan Scholes provides
understanding that strategy must be stand on three key factors such as suitability, accessibility
and acceptability (Wang and Fikis, 2019). The model is described as follows:
Suitability
This key factor ensures that strategic opportunities are suitable for the company or not by
analysing it’s internal environment of the company effectively. It also accesses number of factors
within company like environmental suitability, expectation suitability and capability suitability
then formulate specific strategy to gain goal of the company.
Feasibility
It is another aspect of SAF model to measure strategic option is feasible or not. So, this
factor emphasizes on internal analysis to determine it’s strengths and weaknesses effectively then
measure strategic option is feasible or not.
Acceptability
It another key factor of SAF model whereas acceptability of a strategic choice is arisen
by deeply evaluating two aspects such as financial aspects and stakeholder aspects. According to
stakeholder aspect examine that internal stakeholder and external stakeholders are comply or fit
in the strategic option or not. While financial aspects support to understand that this strategic
option will lead profit or risk in business.
Feasibility is a key factor of SAF strategic model that Twitter Inc. must pursue that will help
organization to deal with all current issues like high existing rivalry competition, bargaining
power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers and threats of substitute etc. has strong power
which act as threat for the company. In this situation this feasibility strategy determines
feasibility of all strategy through analysing internal and external environment of the company.
For example, in the case of strong rivalry competition Twitter needs to take some essential steps
like developing a sustainable differentiation strategy that will lead competitive advantage within
company and reduce intensity of competition for the Twitter. In the context of high bargaining

power so organization should build strong supply chain with diverse suppliers which can lead
profitability in its selling revenue (Zhang, Kong and Simonovic, 2018). High bargaining power
of suppliers is another threat for the company so organization must invest huge funds on it’s
R&D department that will helpful to improve large users base in it’s social media platform which
will generate high revenue as well. With the feasibility key factors Twitter Inc. can easily
determine feasibility of all strategies which will implement to overcome their current issues and
enables to build sustainability in it’s social media platform.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that there are top-level management of Twitter is highly required to
properly manage its various strategies of business for achieving long term profit in the social
networking industry. There are deliberated and emergent approaches has been discussed in this
report, in which these can contribute in more developing business strategies for gaining excellent
competitive advantage. There are different frameworks also has been used in this report which
can support to upper management of Twitter in innovating such business strategies and tactics
which can provide great profit margins to this social networking company.

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