Discount Shoes and Elegant Footwear are both retail shoe companies. Both have outlets in major cities throughout the United States. Discount Shoes uses a cost leadership strategy, and Elegant Footwear uses a product differentiation strategy

Required Answer each of the following questions.

A. What differences would you expect to observe between the two companies with respect to the location and design of their stores, the types of products they sell, and the types of service they provide?

B. Compare the companies’ expected sales revenues, cost of goods sold, operating expenses, merchandise inventory, and plant assets based on the strategies they use to generate profits.

his exercise gives you an opportunity to discuss in class ethical and legal issues related to methods being used by many companies to spy on competing firms. Gathering and using information about competitors is an area of strategic management that Japanese firms do more proficiently than American firms. Instructions On a separate sheet of paper, write down numbers 1 to 18. For the 18 spying activities that follow, indicate whether or not you believe the activity is ethical or unethical and legal or illegal. Place either an E for ethical or U for unethical, and either an L for legal or an l for illegal for each activity. Compare your answers to those of your classmates and discuss any differences. 1. Buying competitors’ garbage 2. Dissecting competitors’ products 3. Taking competitors’ plant tours anonymously 4. Counting tractor-trailer trucks leaving competitors’ loading bays 5. Studying aerial photographs of competitors’ facilities 6. Analyzing competitors’ labor contracts 7. Analyzing competitors’ help-wanted ads 8. Quizzing customers and buyers about the sales of competitors’ products 9. Infiltrating customers’ and competitors’ business operations 10. Quizzing suppliers about competitors’ level of manufacturing 11. Using customers to buy out phony bids 12. Encouraging key customers to reveal competitive information 13. Quizzing competitors’ former employees 14. Interviewing consultants who may have worked with competitors 15. Hiring key managers away from competitors 16. Conducting phony job interviews to get competitors’ employees to reveal information 17. Sending engineers to trade meetings to quiz competitors’ technical employees 18. Quizzing potential employees who worked for or with competitors