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Product cover image for Zoom Video Communications: Flash in the Pandemic or Enduring Success?

Zoom Video Communications: Flash in the Pandemic or Enduring Success?

Malay Krishna, Gursimran Gambhir

Product #:W24950
Supplier:Ivey
Discipline:General Management, Strategy
Setting:United States, 2020
Details:Case (PDF) • 16 pages • 2021-07-28 (Rev: 2022-02-09)

Subjects:

Competitive advantageCompetitive strategyEntrepreneurial business strategyEntrepreneurshipStrategyManagement

Industries:

Information technology and telecom sector

Geography:

North AmericaUnited States
Your Price:$9.71

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Zoom, a popular video conferencing service based out of San Jose, California was built from scratch to be a business-segment focused, easy-to-use video conferencing service. The program was created by Zoom Video Communications Inc., which was founded by Eric Yuan in 2012. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the video conference market grew rapidly. Despite competing against much larger competitors, such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Webex, Zoom took an early lead, surmounted significant obstacles, and continued to grow. At the end of 2020, however, Zoom had to consider how to maintain its lead—not only during, but also after the pandemic.

Learning Objectives

The case helps business strategy students identify sources of competitive advantage, how it is built, and how it might be sustained. The case was designed for use in graduate-level courses on business strategy. It is also well suited for executive audiences or for use as an online exam. Within the course, the case can be positioned toward the middle, as a bridge between the core topics of sources of competitive advantage and sustaining competitive advantage. After working through the case and assignment questions, the students will be able to
  • analyze competitive advantage built on a focus on unmet customer needs, using the value chain framework;
  • assess how a company addresses the threats of imitation, substitution, slack, and holdup by applying the tetra threat framework; and
  • formulate a strategy for what a company should do to sustain its advantage.
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Case Study: Zoom Video Communications: Flash in the Pandemic or Enduring Success? (English version) | Ivey Publishing