Week 5 : Internal analysis (02/21 to 02 1. Conduct a value chain analysis for Five Guys. What are its primary activities? What are its support activities? Identify the activities that add the most value for the customer. Why? Which activities help Five Guys to build its differentiated brand? Why? 2. As discussed in this chapter, resources that are valuable, rare, and costly to imitate can help create a competitive advantage. In many cases, firms try to reverse-engineer a particular feature from a competitor's product for their own uses. It is common, for example, for smartphone manufacturers to buy the newest phones of their competitors and take them apart to see what new components and features the models have implemented. However, this sort of corporate behavior does not stop with hardware products. With hundreds of millions of users and rapid growth, China is considered to be one of the most lucrative online markets worldwide. Baidu (baidu.com), a Chinese web services company, has allegedly adapted many of the search tools that Google uses. Baidu, however, modifies its searches inside China (its major market) to accommodate government guidelines. In protest over these same guidelines, in 2010 Google left the Chinese market and has been running its Chinese search operations from Hong Kong. Google no longer censors its online searches as requested by the Chinese government. In recent years Baidu has run into competition from another Chinese company (Bytedance) but Google is still not a key force in China. However, there are reports that Google is experimenting with censored searches in order to re-enter the burgeoning Chinese market. This has been controversial both inside and outside of the One article from CNBC in summer of 2019 says, Google has been accused of working with China. One article from CNBC in summer of 2079 says, Google has been accused of working with China. Here's what they've been doing there, Yet even inside the firm there are questions about the right approach to take with China as noted here in an article from The Intercept, Google's Secret China Project "Effectively. Ended" after Internal Confrontation. See article in content. 2.1. It is legal to take apart publicly available products and services and try to replicate them and even develop work-arounds for relevant patents. But is it ethical? If a key capability protected by patents or trademarks in your firm is being reverseengineered by the competition, what are your options for a response? Also, how do you evaluate Google's decision to move its servers to Hong Kong and forgo the Chinese market? After an absence of nearly a decade should the firm look for ways back into the search engine market in China? 2.2. The chapter mentions that one type of resource flow is the loss of key personnel who move to another firm. Assume that the human resources department of your firm has started running ads and billboards for open positions near the office of your top competitor. Your firm is also running Google ads on a keyword search for this same competitor. Is there anything unethical about this activity? Would your view change if this key competitor had just announced. major layoff