Strategic Marketing and Finance Decision Analysis

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.0, , language: English, abstract: AutoZone Inc. (AZO) is a major player in the $83B US automotive aftermarket. The market segments are mainly Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and Do-It-For-Me (DIFM) and in recent years AZO has entered the Mexican automotive aftermarket. AZO expanded heavily over the last years by opening new stores and therefore AZO has had a five yearprofitablesales CAGR of 5.9%. The goal of our team project was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of AZO including a large marketing review as well as an extensive financial analysis. The project also consists of a valuation of an average AZO store in order to determine a recommendation for AZO's future strategy. The market analysis of all current and potential threats and opportunities gave us the needed understanding of the industry AZO is operating in. Based on that we made an assessment, aligned to AZO's SWOT analysis, how AZO can gain the most benefits from the market through working on its current strengths and weaknesses. Thereby, we discussed parts of AZO's strategy and operation processes that have to be modified in order to outperform the domestic and Mexican competition like in the past.