Strategic Market Planning for Public Transit Systems (Part 4)
Submitted by G. Tomas M. Hult, Ph.D. |
Developing Corporate Strategies
Corporate strategy determines the means for utilizing resources in the areas of finance, research and development, human resources, marketing, and production to reach the organization’s goals. A corporate strategy determines not only the scope of the business but also its resource deployment, competitive advantages, and overall coordination of all the functional areas. Two questions have to be addressed in the process of establishing a corporate strategy:
* What is our business?
* What should our business be?
To elaborate further, the term corporate in this context does not only apply to large scale public transit "corporations" but is used by all organizations from the smallest (e.g., Tallahassee) to the largest public transit systems in major metropolitan cities (e.g., New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles). While the basic answers to the two corporate strategy questions may be "to provide the community with convenient and affordable public transit alternatives," each of these public transit systems target a certain clientele. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the reason why a specific public transit organization is in business is necessary to achieve corporate and/or community goals.