Background

Tesla was founded 2003 by a group of Silicon Valley engineers with Elon Musk investing in the firm and becoming Tesla's chairman in 2004 (Thompson & Lee, 2017). Since its inception, Tesla has been driven to support the shift towards a solar electric economy through the development of a wide range of electric cars. These include "affordably priced family cars" and those "designed to beat a gasoline sports car like a Porsche or Ferrari in a head to head showdown" (Musk, 2006). Tesla now has a range of more than five electric cars and various solar energy generation and storage systems which collectively generate more than (US)$30 billion in sales annually (D&B Hoovers, 2021). This current performance, together with investor optimism regarding the firm's future, resulted in Telsa overtaking Toyota in 2020 to become the world's most valuable car company (Klebnikov, 2020).

Question 1 Strategic Management Research Report

You have been commissioned by the senior management of Tesla to prepare a research report on the firm's current strategy. As part of your research report, you must select one of Tesla's key product lines and provide the following:

1. A brief overview of the nature and history of Tesla and your chosen product line

2. A brief overview of the firm's current strategy for your chosen product line

3. A detailed overview of your product line's environment using Porter's Five Forces Model

4. An overview of your own recommended strategy for your chosen product line for the next three years. This recommendation should: (a) be clearly linked to your prior analysis, (b) include examples to illustrate how it could be implemented, and (c) include two strategic objectives and two key performance indicators for each objective. As identified below, your objectives should consistent with the S-M-A-R-T objectives criteria and your KPIs should be consistent with the criteria for effective performance measures.

4. An overview and illustrative example of how cost-volume-profit analysis could be used to evaluate the appropriateness of your recommended strategy given the impact on company profits (reasonable assumptions regarding the behaviour of the firm's costs will need to be made)