Strategic Managment

Strategic Management

Strategic management is the ongoing process companies use to form a vision, analyze

their external environment and their internal organization, and select one or more strategies to

use to create value for customers and other stakeholders, especially shareholders (Ireland pg. 4).

As a CEO of a business your main goal is products, sales, and profits. If you don’t focus on those

three priorities then you will allow the business to fail.

In the article, Avon: The rise and fall of a beauty icon, The CEO made bad bets and

missed opportunities; therefore, she has been replaced as well as profits decreasing. The CEO,

Andrea Jung was hired at the company in 1993 as an Avon consultant to look into the feasibility

of retail outlets. Until then she had spent her career in high end retail. Jim Preston, CEO thought

that project would take months; however, Jung reported back that the move would be a mistake.

She didn’t feel that Avon had the right packaging or positioning to compete with store brands. In

1994, Jung joined the company full time as president of the product marketing group for Avon, a

newly created position. Within five years, Jung took the position as CEO just after Avon said it

would miss earnings target, become the first women to ever lead the company (Kowitt 1-5).

Jung immediately wanted to give Avon a dramatic facelift. She launched Avon’s “Let’s

Talk” campaign, the company’s first global advertising initiative, and signed Venus and Serna

Williams as spokespeople. Advertising climbed from $63.4 million in 1999 to its peak of $400

million in 2010. She also launched a new brand “Mark” a hipper, trendier line aimed at college-

age women, attempted to both raise the company’s imagine and attract a younger demographic

(Kowitt 1-5). In doing all these changes, Jung didn’t realize the mistakes she was making and the

debt she was incurring.

In 2009, another restructuring began leaving employees demoralized...