Strategic Management: Virgin Group's Performance, Planning & Analysis

This report provides a strategic analysis of Virgin Group Ltd., a British multinational venture founded by Nik Powell and Sir Richard Branson. It assesses the company's performance, highlighting its competitive strengths, market position, and areas for improvement across its value chain. The analysis covers Virgin Group's diversified portfolio, strong brand name, and flexible distribution system. The report also proposes a strategic plan using tools like the Ansoff Matrix and Porter's Generic Strategies to justify strategic choices, focusing on market penetration, product development, market development, and diversification. Furthermore, it reflects on the module's learning outcomes, including understanding the impact of the business environment and enhancing analytical and decision-making skills. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of strategic management in achieving business objectives and improving operations.

Strategic Management 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
PART A (1).....................................................................................................................................3
Performance of company highlighting competitive strengths, market position and areas where
improvement...............................................................................................................................3
PART A (2).....................................................................................................................................4
Propose a strategic plan for company using appropriate tools to explain and justify your
strategic choices..........................................................................................................................4
PART B...........................................................................................................................................7
Online learning activities <and in class workshops> and e-tivities............................................7
CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Strategic management is strategic use of resources of business to reach at aim and
objectives of firm. This needs the reflection on procedures and processes within an organisation
and external factors impact on company functioning. This consists setting objectives, examining
competitive environment, analysing strategies and assuring management rolls out strategies
across company. This gives overall direction through developing plans and policies that mainly
designed to attain objectives (Ansoff and et. al., 2018). Virgin Group Ltd. Is British
multinational venture that founded through entrepreneurs Nik Powell and Sir Richard Branson in
year 1970. There will be discussed about performance of company highlighting the competitive
strengths, areas and market position where improvement across value chain many be needed.
Strategic plan for using the tools to define and also justify strategic choices.
PART A (1)
Performance of company highlighting competitive strengths, market position and areas where
improvement
Virgin Group is diversified grouping of more than 200 privately held organisations. It is
an investment firm that focused on the tourism, television, leisure, travel, finance, health sectors
and music. The main strength of the Virgin Group is strong brand name. Its main advantage is
that they are highly experienced in various types of the distribution. This is less integrated that
the big groups that make them flexible as comparison to others. Virgin as portfolio manager
corporate parent adding the value through sharing activities and resources. Virgin group use the
common distribution system across business. This uses similar from the brand name for its each
services and products (Bettis and et. al., 2016). Virgin Group has the strong market position as
philosophy and name is listed as most necessary factor in success of Virgin Group. It has
expanded more than 200 firms in around 30 countries. Its revenue is exceeded £11 billion with
number of 50000 people in almost 29 countries. Richard controls firm announced that the profit
is around GBP 68.4 pound that is increment from earnings of previous year. It was mainly
attributed to diversified business venture and launching airlines among Australian and also
Tokyo in Japan. Profit contrast sharply with the pre-tax loss made through British Airlines.
Other than this, struggle of company to capture the new consumers and preserve the old in

competitive environment. It is among aim of forming the marketing strategy for business which
is competitive in globalised world.
It is necessary to company to make improvement in the areas across value chain may be
needed. There is requirement to Virgin Group to make investment in the e- commerce in
artificial intelligence. Virgin company can use the artificial intelligence tool in order to write the
email subject lines. In context to the marketing, Virgin Group is use of the machine learning,
customer data and some of the other computational concepts for predict action of an individual.
This can take more data amount and assist marketers to segment them in an easy manner. Virgin
group can searching as well as use of the new sources to get competitive benefits. In regards to
thins, management may be rethink to integrating in process of planning inside and outside both
environment of firms (Engert, Rauter and Baumgartner, 2016). Management of Virgin Group
should review the political, demographic and social descriptions which impacting indirectly or
directly running of business. These all external variables are necessary in developing the internal
strength like technological process, market sensing, customer experience and channel bonding.
More globalised firm has to be include centralising management so that the flow of information
along bureaucratic channel is to be retained. Centralised management means that an individual is
given the responsibilities should be answerable to member at high rank. It will help in measure
employees performance level in office and take the control of resources. On the other hand,
Virgin group should focus on developing the customer experience centres in various locations.
Apart from this, providing the personalised services to consumers, centre will be mandated to
supply management with the data related to preferences of customers. This will help company at
the time of introducing new goods that will require to be penetrate market rapidly (Zhao and et.
al., 2017).
PART A (2)
Propose a strategic plan for company using appropriate tools to explain and justify your strategic
choices
Strategic plan is document that used to interact with company and objectives, actions
required, actions required to attain set objectives and some other components developed at the
time of planning exercise. Its main aim is to set objectives of business and also develop plan to
attain them. The vision of Virgin Group is to be shopper the victor, through providing the brand

values. Corporate strategy of Virgin Group is to operate such as venture capital company on the
basis of Virgin brand. It consists non- related diversification at person business unit level. It has
been examined that the main focus of Virgin Group is to provide quality service through
motivating staff members and gain the competitive advantage. Virgin group should be focused
about providing the better experience to customers by providing them high quality products and
services so that they can be loyal towards company and gain competitive benefits at marketplace
(Ginter, Duncan and Swayne, 2018).
Ansoff matrix
It is strategic planning tool that gives framework to assist the senior managers, marketers
and executives to devise the strategies for future development. This is tool that assist the Virgin
Group to decide goods and the market growth strategy. This suggest that business attempts to
develop whether markets new or the existing markets. There are different growth strategies
included in Ansoff matrix mention below:
Market penetration strategy- It is related to growing the market share with existing
market segment of business. It can achieved through vending the products or services to make
the consumers or through searching new consumers in existing markets (Hitt and Duane Ireland,
2017). The virgin group market penetration strategy consists the Virgin Holidays, Virgin
Records and others. It can be attained through cost reduction, promotion support and increase
distribution.
Product development strategy- Company with the market for current goods might be
embark on strategy related to developing the other goods that catering to similar market. It
consists in extending product range that available to existing markets of Virgin Group. The
products of Virgin group consists Bio Diesel, Virgin fuel cell, improved in- flight entertainment
and others. These all the goods many be obtained through investment in the research and
development of the additional goods, purchasing goods, acquisition of the right in order to
produce goods of someone and then branding it (Meyer, Neck and Meeks, 2017).
Market development strategy- In this strategy, it mainly consists in extending market
range. Virgin group tries to be expand into the new markets using existing offerings. Market
development strategy of Virgin Group consists Virgin Australia, Virgin EMI and others. It can
attained through industrial buyers, foreign markets, various customer segment and the foreign
markets.

Diversification strategy- In this, diversification group tries to be develop market share
through introducing as well as launching new goods in the new business markets. Under this
business strategy, there is risk involved because the market development and product is needed.
This is included as the proper option when current markets are to be saturated or already
reaching end of the life cycle because this can assist to give the vital synergies. In context to
Virgin Group, unrelated diversification was applied. It was related with the recording and music,
firm ventured into the new markets and goods consisting Virgin megastores,
telecommunications, Cola and Airlines. Therefore, Virgin group has been able to have the results
of the high gains from the high risk strategic direction (Morden, 2016).
Porter's generic strategies
It explains how an organisation pursues the competitive benefit across selected market
scope. This is combined with scope of the activities for which an organisation seeks to attain
them. The focus of the generic strategy is on choice of narrow competitive scope within sector.
Focuser chooses segment in a sector and also tailor strategy to be serving them to inclusion of
the others. Firm mainly selects to be pursue one of the two kinds of competitive advantage either
minimum costs than its rivals or through differentiating itself with dimensions valued through
consumers in order to command high cost (Rothaermel, 2016). There are different strategies
involved in the Porter's generic mention below:
Cost Leadership Strategy- This strategy mainly consists firm winning the market share
through appealing cost- conscious consumers. It is attained through having minimum cost in
target market segment or least at minimum cost to the value ratio. To be success at providing
minimum cost while attaining profitability as well as more return on investments, company can
operate at minimum cost as comparison to its competitors.
Differentiation Strategy- It consists differentiate services in some way to compete in
successful manner. It is appropriate where target customer segment is not the price sensitive,
market is saturated and consumers have particular requirements where served possibly
(Trigeorgis and Reuer, 2017).
Cost Focus- In this, company can target the niche market and provide low cost. Firm can
select to target clear niche market and by understanding dynamics of market as well as wished
customers to assure that the price remain minimum.

Differentiation Focus- Company can target the niche market and goods has unique or
attractive features. This kind of strategy consist strong brand loyalty between customers this is
necessary to assure that goods remain unique in context to stay ahead of the possible competition
(Schilling and Shankar, 2019).
It has been examined that Virgin Group mainly uses the Cost leadership strategy. This
company mainly use capital and resources in an effective manner. In the fist approach for market
benefits, company use resources on the basis of market strategy. For an example, cost of Virgin
airline is cheaper than the other airlines as it has own control in the management and pricing.
Virgin Group mainly uses low cost indirect and direct operating in processing of business.. this
is done with the technical setup in company and also outsourcing the supplementary business
activities (Wheelen and et. al., 2017).
PART B
Online learning activities <and in class workshops> and e-tivities
In this module, I learnt about the business environment and how this impact on the
business organisation. Business environment is considered the internal and external factors
which can affect on performance of business effectively. Through this module, I learnt about the
different conditions of business, nature of the business organisations, political and social
conditions which may impact on the operations as well as business activities. Other than this,
there has been learnt about the legislations which are different from country to country. I
examined that there are many legislations needs to be identified while conducting the business in
other country. In regards to thinking progressed when observing a holistic strategic view of
organisations in their markets, I can identify the structure of company easily, nature of the
business and also impact of conditions on business organisation. On the other hand, this module
help me in the career development as this helps in enhance my analytical skills, communication
skills, research skills and the decision making skills. Regarding this, I attended many workshops
and seminars to get the deep knowledge related to the business environment module.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from above mention information that strategic management
consists formulation as well as execution of main objectives and also initiatives are taken
through top managers of company on behalf of the owners. There has been discussed about the

areas where company needs to be make improvement and make its business operations better.
The strategic plan has been developed by using the porters generic strategies and ansoff matrix
models.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Ansoff, H. I. and et. al., 2018. Implanting strategic management. Springer.
Bettis, R. A. and et. al., 2016. Creating repeatable cumulative knowledge in strategic
management.
Engert, S., Rauter, R. and Baumgartner, R. J., 2016. Exploring the integration of corporate
sustainability into strategic management: a literature review. Journal of cleaner
production. 112. pp.2833-2850.
Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J. and Swayne, L. E., 2018. The strategic management of health care
organizations. John Wiley & Sons.
Hitt, M. and Duane Ireland, R., 2017. The intersection of entrepreneurship and strategic
management research. The Blackwell handbook of entrepreneurship, pp.45-63.
Meyer, G. D., Neck, H. M. and Meeks, M. D., 2017. The entrepreneurship‐strategic management
interface. Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating a new mindset, pp.17-44.
Morden, T., 2016. Principles of strategic management. Routledge.
Rothaermel, F. T., 2016. Strategic management: concepts (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education.
Schilling, M. A. and Shankar, R., 2019. Strategic management of technological innovation.
McGraw-Hill Education.
Trigeorgis, L. and Reuer, J. J., 2017. Real options theory in strategic management. Strategic
Management Journal. 38(1). pp.42-63.
Wheelen, T. L. and et. al., 2017. Strategic management and business policy (p. 55). Boston,
MA: pearson.
Zhao, E. Y. and et. al., 2017. Optimal distinctiveness: Broadening the interface between
institutional theory and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal. 38(1).
pp.93-113.
Online
Kenton,W., 2020. Strategic Management. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/strategic-management.asp>.