Free Custom «The Great Lakes» Essay Paper

The great lake chemical corporation was incorporated in 1933 as McMlanahan Oil Company. It was initially formed to be an oil and gas exploration company. For many years the company was restricted to exploration and stayed small due to limited reserves and competition from bigger companies. After its acquisition by a Wall Street financer, the company's goals changed and focused more on forming a natural resource conglomerate. This lead to the subsequent mergers with smaller companies and buying them out made the company grow exponential. It is one of the world's greatest bromine and brominated chemical products producer. Great lakes company rely heavily for most of its revenue as it's mixed with some of the organic compounds to give many toxic and non toxic products.

Some of the factors that help identify the environment in which the great lake company is in or rather the factors that affect its growth are like social or demographic factors, this is because the company, which deals with lead additive product, has customers to this products coming from various countries like china, Middle East and many other African countries. The similarity in these regions is the vast population and they all have very low income families who cannot afford leaded gasoline vehicles. According to business, the law of supply and demand determines whether a business will grow or not. The demand from these nations may fall in case of a change in its environmental policies. A country may decide to reduce the vehicles that consume these leaded products so as to save the deteriorating environment. The emergence of cheaper products from other companies may cause the company to suffer since the poorer countries always look for cheaper alternatives. The countries may also ban importation of its products as a way to protect local products from competition.

 

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The other factor is technological; this is the dependence on research to make sure its products are superior to the products of other companies. It can't be viewed as how great lake corporation is striving to be the leader in the products it's producing. These scientific advances in how fuel additives are made by developing and patenting their products enable them to keep a competitive advantage over their competitors. This has lead to a massive investment campaign to ensure that the company has the best research staff available and the best equipment for conducting this research, the best researchers will definitely yield better and competitive products. Their also economic factors that affect the corporation, this can be defined as the availability of funds to increase the options available. Many African countries are trying to develop and at the same time keep up with countries like the U.S. this has lead to a slow pace of migration to leaded vehicles lending this a innovation of the future.

The U.S is also going through some economic recession and this has contributed to many the tendency of investors to look for global alternatives. The lack of investors has affected the stocks and also the value of the corporation and hence it has been forced to perform cut backs. These have caused production of inferior products or an increase in the prices of these products. The Great Lakes Corporation is subject to various environmental laws and regulations that require it to protect the quality of the environment and its surroundings. The natures of the products the companies produce expose the corporation to strict and harsh OSHA laws regarding environmental compliance. In case of an accident the suits against the corporation would be financially damaging. The Great Lakes Corporation also faces political challenges; this is where it faces threats of legal magnitude through governing environmental agencies. There have been investigations into the causes of bromine and brominated products in the industry. The use of lead product has been on the decrease in the U.S, but in some countries it's still in use. In case this law suits don't favor the corporation they end up paying a lot of money to the damaged states.

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Most of the lead additives in the U.S have been on the decrease due to the impacts to the environment and this has caused them to be banned, they include gasoline that has been found to be the greatest industrial lead contributor to the environment. According to the five forces of porter's competition model, the existing competitive rivalry between suppliers was initially unfavorable at development stage but now that the corporation is mature it can withstand it and be able to favorably compete. The threat of new market entrants is not so much unless it's in relation to new products that are supplements. The corporation is big and will be able to handle new competition. The bargaining power of the buyers is what greatly affects the corporation due to the economic and environmental reasons surrounding the product, foreign countries may also avoid the product due to political reasons. The Great Lakes Corporation is a big corporation so its strength is not doubtable as it will be able to cater for all the client's needs. The introduction of new energy alternatives is a key block to the corporation as this poses a great competition risk. All in all the industry is attractive as some of this effects are weak for now like new technology is yet to take effect and the other effects are controllable.

Great Lakes Corporation has an elaborate take over plan for its major competitors' buying them out is one of its major strategies and this has worked well. Diversifying its portfolio is also one of its strategies that are working well as it's able to diversify its risks to ensure all investments are safe. The main capabilities of Great Lakes is that they have a strong shareholding in additives and lead, this almost makes them monotonous in that they can be able to conduct research and make their products better, this superior and vantage and a good pool of resources both in terms of raw materials and monetary resources put the great lakes corporation on top of other competitors.