Strategy Formulation Grading Guide MGT/498 Version 4 2 Copyright Copyright © 2016 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. University of Phoenix® is a registered trademark of Apollo Group, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows NT® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Use of these marks is not intended to imply endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation. Edited in accordance with University of Phoenix® editorial standards and practices. Individual Assignment: Strategy FormulationPurpose of Assignment The Week 4 individual assignment is the second part of a three part strategic management plan for the company selected by the student in Week 3. The purpose of the assignment is for students to establish long-term goals and objectives; indicate, specify and discuss strategies; and investigate, consider and describe specific business strategies including vertical integration and strategic alliances, to achieve competitive advantage in the industry. The student also generates an appropriate organizational chart in alignment with the stated strategies.Resources Required Textbook Chapters 4, 5, 7 and 11 Grading Guide Content Met Partially Met Not Met Comments: Student establishes long-term goals and objectives. Student addresses the following regarding strategy formulation: a. Indicates the markets that the company will pursue. b. Specifies the unique value the company will offer in the selected markets. c. Discusses the resources and capabilities that are required. d. Analyzes how the company will capture value and sustain competitive advantage over time. Student addresses the following regarding business management strategy: a. Consider Cost and Differentiation Advantages. b. Describe the Corporate Strategy. c. Investigate Vertical Integration. d. Describe Strategic Alliances. e. Detail the Company Competitive Advantage. f. Generate an Organizational Chart of the company you selected. The paper is 1,050 words in length. Total Available Total Earned 5 #/5 Writing Guidelines Met Partially Met Not Met Comments: The paper—including tables and graphs, headings, title page, and reference page—is consistent with APA formatting guidelines and meets course-level requirements. Intellectual property is recognized with in-text citations and a reference page. Paragraph and sentence transitions are present, logical, and maintain the flow throughout the paper. Sentences are complete, clear, and concise. Rules of grammar and usage are followed including spelling and punctuation. Total Available Total Earned 2 #/2 Assignment Total # 7 #/7 Additional comments: PAYPAL COMPANY 1 PAYPAL COMPANY 2 Paypal Company Paypal has been widely known as a global payment business company around t.

1. Strategy Formulation Grading Guide
MGT/498 Version 4
2
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved.
University of Phoenix® is a registered trademark of Apollo
Group, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows NT® are registered
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or
other countries. All other company and product names are
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective
companies. Use of these marks is not intended to imply
endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation.
Edited in accordance with University of Phoenix® editorial
standards and practices.
Individual Assignment: Strategy FormulationPurpose of
Assignment
The Week 4 individual assignment is the second part of a three
part strategic management plan for the company selected by the
student in Week 3. The purpose of the assignment is for
students to establish long-term goals and objectives; indicate,
specify and discuss strategies; and investigate, consider and
describe specific business strategies including vertical
integration and strategic alliances, to achieve competitive
advantage in the industry. The student also generates an
appropriate organizational chart in alignment with the stated
strategies.Resources Required

2. Textbook Chapters 4, 5, 7 and 11 Grading Guide
Content
Met
Partially Met
Not Met
Comments:
Student establishes long-term goals and objectives.
Student addresses the following regarding strategy formulation:
a. Indicates the markets that the company will pursue.
b. Specifies the unique value the company will offer in the
selected markets.
c. Discusses the resources and capabilities that are required.
d. Analyzes how the company will capture value and sustain
competitive advantage over time.
Student addresses the following regarding business management
strategy:
a. Consider Cost and Differentiation Advantages.
b. Describe the Corporate Strategy.
c. Investigate Vertical Integration.

3. d. Describe Strategic Alliances.
e. Detail the Company Competitive Advantage.
f. Generate an Organizational Chart of the company you
selected.
The paper is 1,050 words in length.
Total Available
Total Earned
5
#/5
Writing Guidelines
Met
Partially Met
Not Met
Comments:
The paper—including tables and graphs, headings, title page,
and reference page—is consistent with APA formatting
guidelines and meets course-level requirements.

4. Intellectual property is recognized with in-text citations and a
reference page.
Paragraph and sentence transitions are present, logical, and
maintain the flow throughout the paper.
Sentences are complete, clear, and concise.
Rules of grammar and usage are followed including spelling and
punctuation.
Total Available
Total Earned
2
#/2
Assignment Total

5. #
7
#/7
Additional comments:
PAYPAL COMPANY
1
PAYPAL COMPANY
2
Paypal Company
Paypal has been widely known as a global payment business
company around the world. It has enabled many people around
the globe to make and receive their payments more securely
without the fear of sharing the customer’s financial details
without their consent. The company has been operating ever
since 1998 when it was founded (Leavitt, 2010). Paypal has
been very successful due to the good implementation of its
organization functions by the management. It is important for us
to know that there are four functions of management in any
organization. These functions include; controlling, planning,
leading and organizing. Paypal has some factors that mainly
affect it both internally and externally. These factors include;
ethics, technology, diversity and innovation. These functions
have always had some considerable impact on the management
of the PayPal Company.
Competitive Advantage of Paypal Company
According to Keane, over the years, the company has been
having some meaningful fist-mover advantage over the other
online and mobile payments companies across the globe. The
company has some huge competitive advantage over the others

6. due to some several things. It is estimated that Paypal has over
169 million users around the world, over 10 million merchants.
The company also has over two-thirds of the 100 largest online
retailers (Peng & Sun, 2009). Keane goes ahead to state that
Paypal will no doubt remain as one of the most widely digital
wallet platform to be used around the world in the coming more
years.
The company’s payment platform is often used more than five
times around the world, compared to the other checkout
payment options. The company’s one touch product has been
viewed as one of the best game changer in the online payment
options. The product has tremendously improved the value
proposition of many merchants (It has improved the rate of
conversion by about 50% in some instances). The proposition
value of many consumers has also been improved through the
One Touch product that was introduced by the company (It has
enhanced the ease of use and speed for the customers). The One
Touch product has simplified the payment process and also
reduced the number of clicks that are required to make any
purchase. The One Touch product has also improved the
security of the stored payment credentials of the customers
across the many multiple devices.
Through the product, many merchants and consumers have been
automatically enrolled and integrated with the Paypal system.
Since the merchants and the customers have been automatically
integrated into the company system, they are no longer required
to do anything for them to be upgraded to the new technology
(zero integration). The One Touch technology has enabled the
company’s many of its million users and almost half of the
Internets 500 retailers to be automatically and immediately
switched to the One Touch technology. Many experts around the
world believe that the One Touch technology by the PayPal
Company will help in the pushing of TPV above PayPal’s mid
20 % guidance.
Strategies used by Paypal Company to create value and gain
competitive advantage

7. According to recent reports, the transaction driven sites like
PayPal and Amazon have been increasingly embracing the
Adaptive design technology in their operation. The main reason
for using the adaptive design by these companies is because
they want to deliver their sites on mobile up to to at least 40%
faster (Roth, 2010). The companies believe that this can only be
achieved by adopting the use of Adaptive design technology
instead of the responsive Web Design technology. PayPal was
listed as one of the top 15 companies in the world that have
really adapted the use of the Adaptive design technology. Other
companies that were listed include; Amazon, Bing, Pandora,
CNN, Pinterest, Google among others.
Marketers around the world have come to realize that many
people around the world are now acquiring mobile phones and
it’s as if they depend upon them to carry out most of their
operations. Due to this fact of acquisition of mobile phones by
many people, the marketers have now been forced to go back to
the drawing board and think of ways of how they are going to
deliver the same content across the multiple screens instead of
just having to maintain and build different sites for the mobile
phones and desktops. The marketers have been increasingly
trying to find and come with different methods on how they can
successfully manage to deliver their content to the many
multiple screens that have now emerged.
The Paypal Company has not been left behind in these efforts in
making its payment system more simple and easy to use by its
customers and merchants. The company has been doing
everything in its power to try and make a mark in the mobile
payments space. It is important to note that even though the
company has some mobile payment capabilities, it has not
managed to gain so much considerable traction in the mobile
payment space unlike Apple that has successfully done it so far
(Peng & Sun, 2009). We all know for a fact that Apple Pay
came into the mobile payment market much later after Paypal
had already entered and managed to easily outdo Paypal.

8. However, Paypal has learnt its lessons and is now putting in
more efforts that are geared towards improving its mobile
payment system. The company has already started taking some
effective steps in the right direction and now the company is
reported to be making some considerable strides each and every
day. The company has now gone ahead to acquire Paydiant with
a huge amount of $ 280 million. The company intends to use
Paydiant’s platform to enable its merchants to create their own
wallets and brand them on their own in turn this will accelerate
the mobile in-store payments therefore driving the engagement
of the consumers through the mobile payments, offers,
prioritization of preferred payment types like the gift cards and
the store branded credit cards and loyalty. This is projected to
help the company to share the mobile payments spotlight.
The company has invested in many several initiatives in the last
past years to enhance its competitive advantage over its rivals.
The company is said to have heavily invested in biometrics
through the support for smartphones that have the feature of
fingerprint sensors. The company has successfully introduced
payment support for some smart watches such as the Android
Wear devices and the Pebble watch (Leavitt, 2010). The
company also launched Pay after Delivery credit service. It did
this through the partnership between it and other two
companies; Cybersource and Authorize. The service has enabled
many users around the world to pay for their goods up to 14
days after they have made their purchase.
Measurement guidelines used by Paypal Company to verify its
strategic effectiveness
Fraud Detection and Handling:
The company has realized that electronic payment fraud is
always costly as it can damage its reputation with its customers.
Therefore, the company has put in place the necessary measure
to curb such incidences (Roth, 2010). It has put in place robust

9. fraud management capabilities.
Legal and Regulatory Issues:
The company has put in place some rules and regulations that
all the customers and merchants are supposed to follow when
transacting any business. Such laws include; laws relating to
collecting value-added taxes, transaction reporting, handling
return reports and many more other regulations.
References
Leavitt, N. (2010). Payment applications make e-commerce
mobile. Computer, 43(12), 19-22.
Peng, H., & Sun, C. (2009, September). The Analysis on the
Charging Mode of Third-Party Payment Platform in CC E-
Commerce Market. In Management and Service Science, 2009.
MASS'09. International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Roth, D. (2010). The Future of Money: It’s Flexible,
Frictionless and (Almost) Free. Wired Magazine.