Environmental Analysis Paper on Comcast

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Business, Business Analysis - Other
Environmental Analysis paper on Comcast

Individual - Environmental Analysis Paper

For this assignment, you will be completing an environmental scan and economic analysis on your selected department, group, division, function, or organization (for which you will create a strategic plan), including the remote, industry, and operating environments. Your environmental scan should describe the situation completely and accurately. You should identify any major changes that you expect to affect your remote, industry, or operating environments in the next 5-10 years.

This will include the following subcomponents:

a. Refine the analysis of the forces and trends you completed for the Week Two assignment.
The industry in which Comcast operates, is the cable TV system and broad band internet industries. In case of the cable TV systems there is a monthly fee dependent on the quantity and quality of channels offered. Further, these fees cover the fees paid to the cable channels for the rights to carry their programming and the cost of maintaining the system. The closest competitor of Comcast is Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, and Cablevision Systems Corporations.

The broadband internet industry is now facing an increase in prices. DSL service providers are increasing the prices even though they get economies of scale. Even though there is decreasing cost there is a trend of increasing prices. The industry structure is now an oligopoly. The main competitors of Comcast are Time Warner Cable and AT&T.

b. Utilize a macroeconomic forecast of economic indicators that will affect your chosen organization in the future and should be considered part of strategic planning.

Comcast has several macroeconomic factors that will affect its industry. These include the gross domestic product the six month forecast of the GDP shows that the GDP will increase marginally from $14.622.8 billion to 14.623 billion. The six month forecast of the retail sales growth rate shows that the retail sales growth rate will decrease marginally from 3.48 to -3.5. The six month forecast of the retail sales shows that the retail sales will decrease from $371,733 million to 353,192 million. The six month forecast of the unemployment rate shows that the unemployment will increase from 9.6% to 9.9%. (See: http://www.forecasts.org/economic-indicator/index.htm)

Comcast is concerned about these indicators because the macroeconomic factors will have a direct impact on the performance of the industry. The macroeconomic factors related to Comcast are the Gross Domestic Product, retail sales growth rate, retail and food services sales, and unemployment rate. Each of these indicates that there will be a decline in the economic factors that affect the industries in which Comcast operates. In this context it is important to note that the demand in both the cable industry and the broadband industry is likely to be weak. This means that the competition in both the segments will intensify.

c. Analyze the non-economic factors in ...