Critical Questions of Meli Marine

ASSESSMENT 2: Case Study A:

Analysis

Introduction

Meli-Marine is currently a well-managed company in the container shipping industry,

mainly operating in niche segments of intra-Asian market. The company’s management

is considering to expand its business to Asia-North America (trans-Pacific) market. The

following questions cover various aspects from macro environment, industry’s

conditions to the company’s specific approaches to tackle these challenges. The

questions can contributes to an overall framework that helps Meli-Marine management

analyze the company’s intended business expansion to trans-Pacific market.

Critical questions

1. Is the growth prospect for trans-Pacific shipping market sustainable?

2. Why does Meli-Marine acquire the small and cost-ineffective fleet for its transPacific business instead of the big and cost-effective one?

3. What are the differentiated value propositions for customers that Meli-Marine will

apply to compete in the new trans-Pacific market?

4. How will Meli-Marine generate adequate financial returns in the trans-Pacific

route with the small-sized and cost-ineffective fleet that it intends to acquire?

5. How will Meli-Marine react with possible developments in macro-economic

environment that may have considerable impacts on its trans-Pacific business?

Assessment 2: Case Study A | S2, 2015: BUSS5000 | Exemplar 1

Justification and discussion of relative effectiveness of critical questions

1. The size and the growth potential of the trans-Pacific market have direct impact

on the feasibility of Meli-Marine’s expansion. Investment in container shipping

requires huge financial capability as the industry is asset-intensive (Lim 1998, p.

361) and entails significant related physical asset fees and charges (Hamermesh

and Yong 2012, p. 3). Meanwhile, container shipping has experienced

tremendous ups and downs during the past 40 years, as witnessed by the CEO

of Meli-Marine. Statistics of global market from...