ms as the current economy interest rates, currency exchange rates, and inflation rates, which could impact the customer demand for their products, as well as acting on other environmental factors such as:a) Technology: Through their advanced research and development of unique and new innovative products, they easily heighten the of barriers to entry for competitors.b) Social: Performing research on current and future trends for healthier and safer products.c) Demographic: Considered the age and education levels of surrounding manufacturing plants. Skilled workers directly impact production capacity.d) Political & legal: What rules and regulations are in place, what is the state of the government political structure, and environmental regulations. In addition to examining their environmental factors, Dow Chemical applied an external analysis by identifying strategic opportunities and threats to their operating environment, such as potential competitors, supplier and buyer power, product substitutes, and rivalry. This may be why Dow Chemical chose to focus on its niche and divest $10 billion in unrelated businesses. Dow Chemical then performed an Internal analysis to pinpoint its internal strengths and weaknesses, and finally performed a SWOT analysis or a competitive comparison between Dow Chemical and its external competitors to build upon their strengths in order to exploit opportunities, counter threats, and also to shore up weaknesses. Dow Chemicals market maneuvers evidence the application of Business-level and Global-level strategies, as well as consideration of stakeholders profit levels. The Dow Chemicals Business-level strategy is indicated by the way it positioned itself in the marketplace by extracting some elements of a Differentiation strategy and some elements of a Cost Leadership Strategy to gain a competitive market advantage. By Differentiation strategy, I mean to say that Dow Chemical elected to seek a competitive a...
