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Assignment Task

 

BACKGROUND

SEAT, S.A. is a Spanish automobile manufacturer with its head office in Martorell (near Barcelona), Spain. The firm has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volkswagen Group since 1986. The firm is strategically repositioning itself from a vehicle manufacturer to a provider of mobility services (i.e. where users pay for transportation only when they need it, rather than owning a personal vehicle that is not used most of the time), especially in increasingly crowded urban areas. As stated by Luca De Meo, the firm’s Chairman: “We are convinced that vehicles will become the second largest connected platform after the mobile phone and we will have the chance to integrate them into a rich ecosystem. This transformation forces us to innovate and move beyond the scope of being just a carmaker, stretching our value chain towards new mobility services, platforms and data businesses”. As part of this repositioning, SEAT has identified ‘compact urban mobility’ (short commutes less than 10 kilometres within the city environment, using a small vehicle) as a core area for strategic development. The firm unveiled its ‘Minim?’ concept vehicle at the 2019 Mobile World Congress to demonstrate SEAT’s vision of the ‘compact urban mobility’ of tomorrow.
Integrating the fields of electrification, connectivity and shared mobility the ‘Minim?’ is a 2- passenger quadricycle primarily intended for business-to-consumer carsharing providers* that has been designed to:

  • have a considerably smaller ecological footprint (3.1 square metres) than a normal car (7.2 square metres) while providing safe, agile travel and easy parking
  • release zero emissions due to its all-electric powertrain
  • reduce the operating costs of carsharing providers by 50%, as the integrated battery-swap
  • system means the vehicle rarely needs to be taken to a recharging point
  • provide a convenient and smooth digital user experience for users based on
  • hyperconnectivity with built-in 5-G technology
  • allow the vehicle – in the future and subject to further development of autonomous technologies - to pick up the user when requested, thereby solving one of the main carsharing user pain points.

The ‘Minim?’ will go into production in 2021, leaving the firm with only 18 months to decide which city from across the globe will be most attractive for the product launch. SEAT’s international strategy team have already undertaken some initial desktop research. Referring to the ‘C40 cities’ (94 of the world’s greatest cities whose mayors are committed to driving meaningful and sustainable action on climate change, including in the area of urban mobility), they have decided to focus on Manchester (UK) and Melbourne (Australia) as potentially attractive cities for the product launch of the ‘Minim?’. As an external consultant, you have been commissioned by the team to research and evaluate these 2 cities and their wider macroenvironments in greater detail.

* Two of the main types of business-to-consumer car-sharing models are:
Station-based carsharing (e.g. Zipcar, Communauto, Maven) – the user only has a choice between a round trip (picking the car up at Station A and returning it to Station A), or a tightly-monitored one-way trip (picking the car up at Station A and returning it to Station B). Those who plan trips ahead of time or are looking for a car at a specific time would benefit from these services. Free-floating carsharing (e.g. car2go, Gig or DriveNow) – the user can see which cars are available within a set operating area on a mobile app and choose the one closest to them. Once the user is finished using the car, they can drop off the car at any location within the set operating area,
saving time and avoiding unnecessary trips. Those who are spontaneous and decide last-minute that they need a car would benefit from these services. NB the difference between carsharing and ridesharing: Carsharing = ‘I rent a car to drive now and park it when I’m finished; someone else will rent the same car later and drive it’; Ridesharing = ‘where several people with compatible destinations/routes go together in the same car (instead of travelling individually in their own personal car or in a carshare vehicle).

 

TASKS
1. In order to identify which city is the most potentially attractive destination for the launch of the SEAT ‘Minim?’, you are required to undertake a comparative analysis of what you believe to be the most relevant city-level urban mobility and wider macro-environmental factors of Manchester and Melbourne.

  • Task 1 must be presented in table format and must be no more than 8 pages in length.
  • Wider macro-environmental data should be recent, primarily quantitative and obtained from appropriate sources (e.g. the most recently published World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness report).
  • City-level urban mobility data should be recent, primarily quantitative and obtained from appropriate sources (e.g. the 2019 Deloitte City Mobility Index, which assesses the health of cities’ mobility networks and their readiness to embrace the future of mobility in the coming decades).
  • A scoring system should be used for each city-level / wider macro-environmental factor for each city to show whether each factor is more or less attractive for the company. These scores should then be totalled for each city in order to arrive at a score of overall attractiveness for each city.
  • Refer to the Assignment 1 Briefing slides for further guidance.

2. Having identified the most attractive city for the product launch of the SEAT ‘Minim?’, provide an evaluation of the city-level / wider macro-environmental factors for your city that you believe to be of most relevance to SEAT – whether in terms of opportunities or threats.

  • You must explicitly discuss the implications of these key city-level / wider macro- environmental factors for SEAT.
  • No reference is to be made to the city that you found to be least attractive in Task 1.

 

Assessed intended learning outcomes
On successful completion of this assessment, you will be able to:
Knowledge and Understanding
1. Demonstrate an advanced understanding of the context of international strategy.
2. Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the macro-environment of international business and how it influences the value-adding activities and decision-making of firms.
3. Critically and comparatively evaluate the relative attractiveness of potential foreign markets to enter.

Transferable Skills and other Attributes
1. Apply planning, organising, decision-making and time management skills appropriate for use in an organisational context.
2. Experiment and develop personal initiative and responsibility in undertaking complex investigations in the solving of organisational problems and issues.
3. Critically analyse and apply key ideas and concepts via comprehensive research relevant both to the subject area and to professional practice in the field.
4. Use terminology associated with the subject area accurately and in a way which demonstrates sophisticated knowledge and understanding.
5. Develop and enhance individually and/or collaboratively effective written and/or oral communication skills for both specialist and non-specialist audiences.
 

Module Aims
1. To provide an advanced understanding of the context of international strategy (the current extent of globalisation, the importance of international activity today, and the reasons why firms compete across national borders).
2. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the macro-environment of international business and how it influences the value-adding activities and decision-making of firms.
3. To enable the critical and comparative evaluation of the relative attractiveness of potential foreign markets to enter.
4. To facilitate the strategic analysis of the internal and industrial environments of firms.
5. To enable a critical evaluation of the suitability of possible modes of entry available to firms seeking to expand into new foreign markets and advance appropriate and justified recommendations.

 

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  • Posted on : February 16th, 2019
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