Corporate Strategy & Diversification

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CORPORATE STRATEGY AND DIVERSIFICATION Definition: Diversification involves increasing the range of products or markets served by an organization. Two types of Diversification: Related Diversification involves diversifying into products or services with relationships to the existing business. Conglomerate (unrelated) diversification involves diversifying into products or services with no relationship to the existing businesses. Synergy may result through the application of management expertise or financial resources, but the primary purpose of conglomerate diversification is improved profitability of the acquiring firm. Little, if any, concern is given to achieving marketing or production synergy with conglomerate diversification. WHY? Diversification is a form of growth marketing strategy for a company. It seeks to increase profitability through greater sales volume obtained from new products and new markets. Reasons for pursuing a conglomerate growth strategy: Defensive reasons may be spreading the risk of market contraction, or being forced to diversify when current product or current market orientation seems to provide no further opportunities for growth. Offensive reasons may be conquering new positions, taking opportunities that promise greater profitability than expansion opportunities, or using retained cash that exceeds total expansion needs. Firms adopting a conglomerate strategy did not seek synergy or strategic fit between businesses except financial synergy that could be released by the purchase of companies with restricted debt capacity, underutilized assets and complementary cash- flows. Conglomerate growth may be effective if the new area has growth opportunities greater than those available in the existing line of business. Without some form of strategic fit, the combined performance of the individual units will
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