Environmental Analysis Paper of United States Postal Service

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Environmental Analysis Paper

About the USPS

As per wikipedia, The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent establishment of the executive branch of the United States government (see 39 U.S.C. § 201) responsible for providing postal service in the US. Within the United States, it is ordinarily referred to as the "Post Office", "Postal Service", "U.S. Mail" or "USPS". It is one of the largest employer in the United States and it operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, with an estimated 260,000 vehicles. (Wikipedia)
As a quasi-governmental agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail.
As per its website:

OUR MISSION: Provide trusted, affordable, universal service
OUR VISION: Be profitable to deliver for future generations
Its mailing services are sold through almost 37,000 Post Offices, stations, branches, contract postal units, our website www.usps.com, and a large network of consignees. They deliver mail to about 148 million city, rural, Post Office box, and highway delivery points. The operations are primarily in the domestic market, with international operations representing less than 3% of the total revenue

http://www.usps.com/history/anrpt07/intro.htm
http://www.usps.com/history/anrpt07/fsection_001.htm

Competitors

* DHL
* FedEx
* TNT
* UPS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service.

Environmental Analysis
Environment analysis is a comprehensive analysis of the internal and external environmental factors affecting an organization. A wide range of influences surrounding businesses can affect organizational decision making powers, strategies, process and performance. Knowledge and review of these drivers of change in business environment are very important to companies.

USPS is part of public sector. Public organizations operate for social and other purposes. Their main goal is to provide social service along with maintaining its financial prudence. Government responsiveness to the interests of society as a whole are fundamental to service delivery and performance. Government agencies are surrounded by 360 degrees of stakeholders - businesses are not. Let us discuss each of the economic influences:

Key Economic Influences

US Markets
According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States GDP of more than $13 trillion constitutes 20 percent of the gross world product.
1) GDP projections

The average annual growth rate of GDP was 2.9% during 2003, while GDP per capita grew at 2% in the same year. There has been growth of 3.3% in 2006 and it's slightly better than 2005 but worse than 2004. Thus the GDP growth is moderate.
This is due to:
1) Increase in Imports
2) Decrease in Exports
3) Decrease in spending by the Federal government.
In the first quarter of 2007 US Economy Grow .7% at the Annual rate.

http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/usa/
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm

Impact on our Industry
In 2007 there has been moderate growth; hence this will restrict the growth in our industry as per GDP forecasts.

CPI- CONSUMER PRICE INDEX http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet

YEAR JAN FEB MARCH APRIL MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
2002 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.6 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.0 -0.2
2003 0.4 0.8 0.6 -0.2 -0.2 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.3 -0.1 -0.3 -0.1
2004 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.3 0.6 0.3 -0.2 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.1 -0.4
2005 0.2 0.6 0.8 0.7 -0.1 0.1 0.5 0.5 1.2 0.2 -0.8 -0.4
2006 0.8 0.2 0.6 0.9 0.5 0.2 0.3 0.2 -0.5 -0.5 -0.1 0.1
2007 0.3 0.5 0.9 0.6 0.6 0.2 0.0 -0.2 0.3 0.2 0.6 -0.1

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. As an economic indicator. As the most widely used measure of inflation, the CPI is an indicator ...