International Business Strategy Case Study: Whirlpool, Inc.

Whirlpool is a multinational Appliance company which has its headquarters in the USA. At Whirlpool there is one strategic direction which specifies very clearly how the growth of the company should take place. It consists of three stages of development. The first stage is to grow. The next stage is to leverage and the final is to expand. Every stage has some resources allotted to them. While the portfolio is manifested, a decision has to be made about what to invest on. The main investments have to be for resources which make possible innovations in the near future
Virtually any innovation action –is included into the Innovation Pipeline (I-pipe). The I-pipe is a direct data accumulation implementation that sanctions employees to look up the

There is a lot of coordination for successful implementation. It is unsurprising that a huge aspect of Whirlpool’s strategic decision to the emerging requirements and competition has been to expand to geographical regions that cost less in terms of production, research and development. This includes China, India, Brazil and some parts of Europe. This strategy has definitely helped in the cost department. However, one has to note a broader picture of this; that all this expansion is actually like a lego block creation of a huger, far-minded vision of how Whirlpool can maintain an edge over its competitors. Adamantine focus on customers and special attention to products on a minimal cost platform of great efficiency is a critical note of this

It was an inexpensive and yet far-reaching idea of huge impact: business should be as transparent as possible giving the company the ability to adapt to a large variety of external requirements as fast as possible. There might be major changes such as variations in component prices and minor changes too, yet Whirlpool wanted to handle this in a way such that even though such changes were out of the hand of the manufacturers, it should not have much impact on market margins. The company also created a more microscope-level of visibility; thus by knowing which products had the greater margins, the company could change its market strategy accordingly and balance impact thus managing to survive in the