5 Management Strategies You Should Know To Crack Your Interviews

Personal Interviews carry a lot of weightage in the admission criteria of Top B-schools. To ace those interviews, you need to give your best. There are five basic concepts related to management strategies/frameworks that every MBA aspirant and student should know about as they are mostly asked in interviews and are part of the MBA student's daily life. These 5 concepts are:

1. Porter’s five forces model: Porter’s five forces model is used for industry analysis. It is used as a tool to check the general trend and attractiveness in the industry. This helps the organizations understand the industry's potential and how the company can position itself to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. As the name suggests, this model is based on five key competitive forces that organizations need to go through while analyzing the industry environment and forming a competitive strategy.
   1. Threat of entry: In this, market entry barriers are evaluated, which may be in the form of product differentiation, high cost, government laws, etc. If the threat of entry is low, there will be more competitors in the market.
   2. Power of suppliers: If there are a limited number of suppliers, their bargaining power will be high, so suppliers' power will be high.
   3. Power of buyers: If the number of buyers is high, their bargaining power will be high, so buyers' power will be high. It is mostly in the case of multi-brand products.
   4. Threat of Substitutes: If there are substitutes to the existing product in the market, then the threat of substitutes will be high, leading to obsolescence of the existing products.
   5. Rivalry among existing competitors: If multiple firms are already competing in the market, it may lead to less or no profit as the organization’s decisions are highly influenced by what the competitors are doing.   
2. Porter’s Generic Strategy Model: Porter's generic model identifies the companies' current strategy and drives company strategy. This model talks about four strategies:
   1. Cost Leadership: In this, the organization is the low-cost producer in the market and has a broad market scope. Cost leadership can be achieved by economies of scale, efficient distribution channels, preferential access to raw material, etc. Ex: Big Bazar
   2. Differentiation: In this, the organization develops new products/services that are unique and valued by the customers. It can be done by adding new attributes/features, differences in design, ease of use. Ex: Apple
   3. Focus: In this, the organization selects a narrow market scope with a focus on cost advantage. It exploits cost behaviors in different segments. Ex: Ikea
   4. Focused Differentiation: It is similar to focus; the only difference is that in focused differentiation, the organization exploits the special needs of customers in some segments, whereas focus strategy is based on cost advantage. Ex: Rolls Royce
      
3. SWOT Analysis: SWOT refers to Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats. SWOT analysis enables organizations to evaluate the company's current standing and future prospects by considering internal and external factors. It helps scan the environment and provides the organization with an opportunity to exploit its current competitive advantage and close the gaps in the market.The organizations can identify the strengths and weaknesses by scanning the internal environment & opportunities and threats by scanning the external environment.

4. Boston Consulting Group(BCG) Matrix: BCG Matrix is intended to assist with a long-term strategy to assist a business in considering business development opportunities by surveying its arrangement of products to choose where to contribute, suspend, or develop products. There are four quadrants. Taking the example of ITC:
   1. Dog: These are products with low development or piece of the market share. Example: ITC Infotech
   2. Question mark: Products in high development markets with a low piece of the market share. Example: The food products in the FMCG sector
   3. Stars: Products in high development markets with a high market share of the overall industry. Example: Hotels and Agri-Busines; Specialty Paper and Packaging
   4. Cash Cows: Products in low development markets with a high piece of the market share. Example: Cigarettes
5. Ansoff Matrix: Ansoff's product/market development grid recommends that a business' endeavors to develop rely upon whether it markets existing or new products in existing or new business sectors. The yield from the Ansoff product/market matrix is a progression of recommended development techniques that set the heading for the business procedure. In an Ansoff Matrix, there are four quadrants. Taking the example of coca-cola:
   1. Market Penetration: Here, the company uses the existing product to penetrate the existing market. Example: Limited edition coke cans for Christmas.
   2. Market Development: Here, the company uses the existing product to enter into the new market. Example: Launching Diet coke and Zero.
   3. Product Development: Here, the company brings the new product to the existing market. Example: Introducing flavors like vanilla and cherry.
   4. Diversification: Here, the company brings the new product to enter into the new market. Example: Launching coca-cola t-shirts.

I hope this article will help you in learning some concepts which are a part of MBA life.

Best of Luck!

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