1. What is your impression of Guajilote as a business venture? Guajilote is a growing business but the organization of this company does not have a steady foundation due to the political structure of Honduras. Guajilote also the amount of mahogany wood was limited and was being threatened by forest fires, illegal logging, and slash and dash burn agriculture. Wood trade was even restricted internationally. Guajilote was force to take lower price for its wood due to that there was only one distributing area. Most if not all of Guajilote employees had any education beyond primary schooling, and some were even illiterate. This made it very hard for Guajilote operations because if Guajilote employees were illiterate and had no education then…show more content… This is a great competitive advantage because within ten-year period it is impossible to find mahogany other then illegal practices. However, the cooperation cannot be able to use its competitive advantage at full levels because it does not have much control over the distribution of its products. Thus most of the profits of the overall operations are flowing to distributors like Suazo.
Guajilote is planning to increase its competitive advantage by eliminating the distributors and selling its wood to Honduras' major market centers. Guajilote have the monopoly in this region as no one sells mahogany in the area. Although, Guajilote's mahogany is still sold as a commodity and the cooperative did very little to add value to its product, the continuing depletion of mahogany trees around the world meant that the remaining wood should increase in value over time.
4. Describe the components of the value chain in the production and sale of mahogany in Honduras. Value chain analysis espouses three roles for marketing in a global competitive strategy. The first relates to the configuration of marketing. It may be advantageous to concentrate some marketing activities in one or a few countries. A second role relates to the coordination of activities across countries to gain advantage. A third critical role of marketing is its role in tapping opportunities
