The Boat Insurance Case Study
Reading 1. BPT Insurance
BPT Insurance has been in business for a number of years. The company has, in the past, sold life, home and auto insurance. Their clients are middle class professionals in the state of Ohio. The company recently decided to add a new line – insurance for motor and sail boats.
Assume that the insurance company headquarters is in Cleveland, Ohio. They define the product, market the insurance, have underwriters to approve policies, and IT applications to manage monthly billings and other financial tasks. The company has an investment department that invests the income from policies to earn income that is then used to pay for damage or replacements when necessary. The company depends on local, “independent” agents to actually sell the insurance, and they subsequently meet with customers and document any claims that are made. The agents operate out of their homes and link to the company headquarters via a company website. The agents all report to a sales and support manager who is located in Cleveland.
Figure 1 provides a high-level organization diagram of BPT Insurance of Ohio. In essence Boat Insurance Policy Planning functions as new product development. Underwriting is a core operational activity, but is kept separate as a control on the over-enthusiastic acceptance of new policies.
Write a 700- to 1,050-word paper using your company or one with which you are familiar (if you prefer, your facilitator can assign one to you). Answer the following questions for your chosen organization.
- In your opinion, what are the specific key environmental forces that created an opportunity for your company?
- Have there been changes in the purchasing patterns of your organization’s target market in recent years?
- Conduct an environmental scan for your chosen company to identify key trends. For each of the five environmental forces (social, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory), identify trends likely to influence your company’s marketing efforts and product offering in the future.
- What differentiation strategy should your company undertake to encourage their target market to choose them over other competitors?
- In your analysis, what lessons might you learn from the Geek Squad case study?
- What recommendations can you offer up to Geek Squad?
Include at least three references, at least one of which must come from the University Library.
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines
Question 1.1. (TCOs 2 and 3) What issue is the speaker using to take a position in the following situation? There is little merit to the claim that inheritance taxes will force small businesses to close. After all, the tax has existed for a long time, and there are still plenty of small businesses started every day. (Points : 4) Whether inheritance taxes hit poor people harder than they hit rich people Whether inheritance taxes place an undue burden on small businesses Whether to find a better way than inheritance tax to raise revenue for the state Whether to evaluate tax law based on personal opinionQuestion 2.2. (TCOs 2 and 3) What issue is the speaker using to take a position in the following situation? Readers may learn something about their own relationship to the earth by reading the work of conservationists, who spend a lifetime studying the ways that people and civilizations affect the environment. (Points : 4) Whether conservationists can inform readers about local needs Whether true conservationists have something to teach readers about how to study the earth Whether readers can learn a few things about the environment from conservationists That only conservationists understand the environment in a true sense Question 3.3. (TCOs 1 and 2) In this passage, identify which of the items that follow best states the primary issue discussed in the passage. In pre-civil war Spain, the influence of the Catholic Church must have been much stronger on women than on men. You can determine this by looking at the number of religious communities, such as monasteries, nunneries, and so forth. A total of about 5,000 such communities existed in 1931; 4,000 of them were female, whereas only 1,000 of them were male. Seems to me that proves my point about the Church’s influence on the sexes. (Points : 4) Whether the civil war in Spain was a factor in religious activity in Spain Whether the speaker’s statistics really prove his point about the Church’s influence Whether the figures about religious communities really have anything to do with the overall influence on the Catholic Church in Spain Whether the Catholic Church’s influence was greater on women than on men in pre-civil war SpainQuestion 4.4. (TCOs 1 and 2) In this passage, identify which of the items that follow best states the primary issue discussed in the passage. In 2007, the Dominican Republic banned the sale of two brands of Chinese toothpaste because they contained a toxic chemical responsible for dozens of poisoning deaths in Panama last year. The company that exported the toothpaste, the Danyang Household Chemical Company, defended its product. “Toothpaste is not something you’d swallow, but spit out, and so it’s totally different from something you would eat,” one company manager said. The company manager was taking a position on which issue? (Points : 4) Whether the Danyang Household Chemical Company included toxic chemicals in its toothpaste Whether the Danyang Household Chemical Company did anything wrong by exporting its toothpaste Whether toothpaste should be eaten Whether China should have better product safety standards
