1. Identify 5 factors of an organization’s environment. Provide examples for three of the five factors.
We all have heard the phrase “a fish out of water”. Behind the phrase explains how in order to survive, one has to settle with their environment. The same can be said about businesses today. In order for any business to thrive, they must have some knowledge about their own environment and take full advantage of its pros and cons. Within today’s world, there are both internal and external environmental factors that may play key to whether or not a business is successful. Off the top of my head, five factors could be: competitors, threat of entry, suppliers, substitutes and customers. However, these are very vague and general terms that can apply to any business in today’s market. Let’s go specific and apply examples of competitors, customers and substitutes to my organization Facebook.
In terms of competition, Facebook itself is a huge corporation who leads the world in having the most used social platform. Having such a status, Facebook name alone drives out a lot of other competitors; leaving only a few left to challenge the juggernaut. However, the few that are left are also big names as well (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL) (1). So having a few competitors is always a good thing but the one thing that keeps Facebook on top is their friendly user access on most mobile devices.
In terms of customers, Facebook has the biggest user base far none in comparison to other social networks. Aside from advertising, another way Facebook makes use of their large user base is using virtual currency. Instead of using a credit card or Paypal, Facebook is using credits in order to provide a more seamless mode of payment (1). This especially fairs well with their #1 game developer for most of Facebook’s apps Zynga. According to Zynga, this helped initiatives to rise user spending on games from 0.8 dollars to 2.6 dollars by the end of the market period.
In terms of substitutes, there are many “minor” versions of the site in comparison to what Facebook has accomplished. Having many substitutes is a bad thing; however, Facebook has the brand recognition and huge user base going for it. Sites like Pinterest, Path, Foursquare, Friendster, Nextdoor and Roamz are extremely less known substitutes to Facebook and yet they are overshadowed by the blue corporation (2). Yes, there are companies trying to copy Facebook’s success but at this point, it is not a threat because customers nowadays are more aware to what works and what doesn’t. Lastly, one thing that Facebook has over these smaller networks is that they actually extend their accountants to them. So users who have multiple accountants can actually connect them all through Facebook.
2. Provide an example of an organization that is doing good and well.
Doing good means that a company is performing good acts to the world while doing well means that a company is content or successful. For Facebook, having the world’s largest user base and having that amount of trust in the site from the customers really does promote success to the company. I mean, that is one of the goals to Facebook: to connect people all around the world on one platform. This shows Facebook doing well. On the part where Facebook is doing good, they contribute to charities that not only wants to find cures to diseases, but to acknowledge the conflicts in other countries that we as users can donate to (e.g: spreading awareness of poverty of third world countries). In addition to that, Zuckerberg does contribute to universities (however, there are some controversy with some of his contributions). Lastly, Facebook opens up jobs for many corporations looking for ways to increase their technological expertise. One of the best ways to represent a business is through the advertisement and Facebook is a good ground to do that (3). That is an example Facebook doing good.
