John Deere & Co. 

The company I will be looking at over the semester is John Deere.  John Deere was founded in 1837 and shows a dedication to its long standing customers.  Its core customers are: farmers, ranchers, landowners, builders and loggers.  Ever since John Deere was established it has worked to uphold its core values which are integrity, innovation, commitment and quality.  John Deere's strategy for success aims at focusing on six key areas where the world will experience the most growth.   It is difficult to find companies founded in the United States with such long standing tradition and track record like John Deere has.

Chapter two starts by looking at how an organization can create a environmentally aware organization.  Three key areas of an environmentally aware organization are: environmental scanning, environmental monitoring, and competitive intelligence.  Next, chapter two touches on the basis of a SWOT analysis which provides conditions both inside and outside for a company.  Then chapter two explains the general environment in which a company needs to focus on in their strategy in order to control the environment.  The general environment is composed of demographics, sociocultural factors, political/legal, technological, economic, and global segments.  One of the biggest parts of chapter two is where it explains Porter's Five-Forces Model of Industry Competition which examines a company's competitive environment by looking at threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitute products, and the intense rivalry among competitors.  Last, chapter two focuses on how the internet has changed the competitive environment surrounding companies.