Analysis of Internal Environment at Tootsie Roll Industry
This assignment draws upon financial information available through the SEC’s Edgar Database of financial filings by publicly-traded firms.
Write a report containing the following information/analyses:
A. Using Tootsie Roll’s income statements from the file, TR_Income.xlsx, prepare a “common sized” income statement where all data (except sales) is expressed as a percentage of sales and covering at least 3 years of operation. Analyze the common sized income statement you prepared by discussing the following:
The year-by-year trends that you consider significant.
The overall health of TR as reflected in these trends.
Areas of operation that might need immediate management attention. Areas of operation that seem especially strong.
B. Using the criteria for strategically-significant resources (rare, valuable, hard to imitate, hard to substitute) from resource-based theory, discuss the following:
From Exhibit 3.1, p. 49 in Harrison & St. John, which of the 5 basic resource categories provides the best explanation for Tootsie Roll’s strategic success? Which factor (or factors) within that category are particularly significant, and why?
From Exhibit 3.1, p. 49 in Harrison & St. John, which of the 5 basic resource categories is weakest for Tootsie Roll Industries? Which factor (or factors) within that category are particularly significant, and why?
You may use any resources available to you to respond to the above, but you must cite any resource that you use. This includes help from colleagues, journal articles, textbooks, web pages, and any other resource used – whether printed or not.
There is quite a bit of good background information in the Tootsie Roll Industries case. Please make use of it. There are excellent resources available through the University’s Library system. One resource that you may wish to use is the Hoover’s Online business information resource ( (Links to an external site.)). This resource provides company, industry and other information useful in research of this kind. Another good resource for candy-industry-specific information is Candy Industry Magazine (Links to an external site.) (the magazine of a trade organization). You will need to create a (free) account to access some of the articles/information.
