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What Are The five P's of Strategic Planning?


Strategic management is a constant part of the capital market, where businesses are competing against each other. We are witnessing different strategic management every day. Amazon started Amazon Prime, and they deliver mostly what we buy in 1 day now. Walmart had to adopt a strategy to counter Amazon, so companies like Walmart, Best Buy is using their stores as warehouses and trying to deliver stuff to the customer faster.
We can discuss the five “P’s of strategic planning for these companies.
Planning – Jeff Bezos started selling books on the internet and then expanded Amazon as a platform on the internet. Keeping the customer at the center, now Amazon is not just an online retailer but media company, IT infrastructure company, and many things. The plan Jeff Bezos came up with, that was to sell books then CDs gradually evolved into Amazon we have today.
Ploy – I think starting Amazon Prime was a great ploy by Amazon. When it started, it was cheaper than Netflix membership, it guaranteed 2 days shipping, along with so many other features such as video and music streaming. Nobody really considers Amazon to be a media company until recently. But, Amazon Prime is a great way to retain customers, Because it is a great value for money and with so many features it does not feel expensive. More importantly, competitors did not have anything like Prime.
Pattern – Amazon’s biggest pattern is they are customer-focused. They provide great service for online shopping. When they entered the grocery industry, the industry got disrupted. When Walmart started 2-day delivery, Amazon started so much more like a return to nearest Kohl’s store or Amazon store, 1-day delivery. So they are continuously exceeding consumer’s expectations.
Position – Amazon is a giant company now with a market cap of around 1 trillion USD. And it uses it’s position and brand value and the sheer size to get better deals. And because of their size, it is easier for them to take over other businesses or start a new one where they can make a profit.
Perspective – Amazon grew with selling books, they changed the whole industry, from how people self-publish to how people read books on Kindle (Rao,2011). But they did not stop there. They are constantly adapting to new situations. Being an online or internet company they even acquired Wholefoods to go online to offline. And they made it work because Amazon is constantly evolving ( Boss,2017). This is a perspective of Amazon’s leadership, that they are not just an internet company. They will do whatever it takes to stay ahead of the game.

Example for Ancient Strategic Management: Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” talks about winning without fighting. Walmart and Amazon with their huge size can negotiate better prices with suppliers and as a result, we see companies like Toys are the US is going bankrupt. This is a great way how big is getting bigger and some are disappearing from the market.
3500 years back how Moses delegated tasks to achieve the main mission, we see in every big company. Executives are wearing different hats but they are working towards achieving one single mission for the organization they work for. While Jeff Bezos is Amazon CEO, but along with him there are executives leading different divisions inside the company (Kim,2019), such as –            
Jeff Wilke, CEO of worldwide consumer
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services
Jeff Blackburn, SVP, business and corporate development
Dave Limp, SVP, Amazon devices, digital management
Brian Olsavsky, SVP & CFO
David Zapolsky, SVP & general counsel
Beth Galetti, SVP, human resources
Jay Carney, SVP, corporate affairs
Wei Gao, VP Technical Advisor to CEO

Another a great example is of Trojan horse. Where Greek soldiers hid inside a wooden horse and attacked Troy and won the battle. We have the whole antivirus industry to stop such Trojan Horse incident in today’s connected world, that software is looking out for such virus, malware and protecting our devices. Symantec, Mcfee, Microsoft, AVG all these companies provide security software to safeguard our devices from such Trojan horses.

References - 
Boss, J ( June,2017). Amazon's Competitive Advantage Isn't Cost Or Convenience, It's This. Retrieved from 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2017/06/20/amazons-competitive-advantage-isnt-cost-or-convenience-its-this/#60ea05174958
Rao,V(December,2011). Why Amazon Is The Best Strategic Player In Tech. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2011/12/14/the-amazon-playbook/#3f69bd993bcb
 Kim,E(January,2019). Amazon’s executive org chart, revealed. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/who-are-amazons-top-executives-2019.html


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