Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Sainsbury's competitive supply chain strategy
Sainsbury's competitive supply chain strategy
Sainsbury's competitive supply chain strategy
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Sainsbury's competitive supply chain strategy
4.0 Three Options for Sainsbury’s Next Strategy
This section discusses three options available to Sainsbury’s in light of the cultural differences between the UK, its home country and Egypt is new target market.
4.1 Scale Down its Operations
Scaling down a business means reducing the business operations to manageable bits and pairing profit increase with increasing overhead to reduce losses (Bishop 2009, p. 148). According to McNall et al. (2011), when venturing into new territory, it is best for firms to scale down their business as a strategy to avoid risks, master the market dynamism and to ensure sustainability (p. 246). This is especially true if the new market is culturally different from the home county. If Sainsbury’s were to scale
…show more content…
According to Keillor (2011), partnership entry strategy occurs when two or more firms join their operations be it marketing or management, while still maintaining their independence (p. 93). This form of entry strategy is considered good for companies that are venturing into countries that have a distinct culture from the one they are used to operating. When venturing into Egypt Sainsbury’s formed an alliance with The Edge, one of Egypt’s best supermarket with good management, an elaborate distribution network and strong links with the government (Sebora et al. 2014, p. 6). The result of this partnership has been that the supermarket has managed to flood its facility with consumers and some retail stores have been closed due to high competition (Sebora et al. 2014, p. …show more content…
Entering into a partnership would be beneficial to the supermarket in terms of lowering the risk of investment, the companies will be able to share their resources, assets and suppliers, share management, and enhance each other’s brand (Keillor 2011, p. 93). By applying the VRIO analysis, a concept used to measure a firm’s value, rarity, inimitability, and organization against competitors, Sainsbury’s is a good supermarket to partner with (Gaubinger et al. 2014, p. 73). Foremost, the supermarket is a huge brand and has got vast resources in terms of personnel, facilities and equipment, the company is modern and uses the latest technology a rare aspect in Egypt, the supermarket follows a ‘neighbourhood model’ that is hard to replicate for local supermarkets, and the supermarket is
Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG) came into being more than eight decades ago when several independent retailers decided that the power of a cooperative far outweighed the influence of any one individual retail grocer. AWG provides distributor services to independent grocers in over 30 states with nine distribution centers throughout the South and Southeast regions of the country. In addition to their wholesale foods department, AWG offers a myriad of services from new store design, construction, marketing, product placement and “world class” logistical consultation (cite 11). AWG faces many of the same logistical challenges that other similar wholesalers face to include rising fuel costs, inclement weather, stringent timelines and an ever evolving need for stringent quality. One method to exploit a business’s positive and negative attributes is through the use of a Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat analysis, or SWOT analysis (Cite 11). If used correctly, the analysis results can give insight into potential market areas of expansion and expose vulnerabilities to senior leadership so that they can be mitigated. AWG looks at its Supply Chain Management (SCM) as an integral part of its core business offering multiple services such as logistics to new co-op members. The team members of AWG are positioning themselves for sustainable success, now and in the future.
J Sainsbury's aims and objectives Their business is now focused very much on Sainsbury’s Supermarkets and Sainsbury’s Bank following the sale of Shaw’s
Economies of scale are cost advantages that a company obtain due to expansion over a period of time. A new entrant will definitely struggle to meet up on this factor.
This is the second part of the strategic assignment. In this report the competecies, culture and resource analysis of Tesco is presented. Furthermore in this report SWOT analysis of Tesco is presented and then two strategic options are suggested to Tesco. The strategic options suggested are then evaluated through the SAF model.
Business strategy is the means by which firm’s plans to achieve its goals and objectives. It can also be termed as organization long-term planning. The strategy covers periods between 3-5 years and sometimes longer. Businesses use two major types of strategy, general or generic and competitive strategies. The overall strategy involves strategies of growth, globalization and retrenchment. The competitive advantage includes low pricing, product and customer differentiation. We will look at the business strategy used by Marks and Spenser (Cole, 1997). The company is a British multinational located at Westminster London and specializes in clothes and luxurious food products.
Lidl is a food retailer with its roots in the 20th century, being founded in Germany and expanding to the UK in the early 1990s – with amazing growth in the 21st century, a century of change. Since being founded and also in future, revolutionary leadership and exceptionally organised management are grown though in the fundament of Lidl’s success and have encouraged one of Germany’s biggest grocery market share holders to have reached 4.6% of the market share in the UK in September 2016, with some of its competitors being the German food retailer Aldi, but also the British “Big Four” food retailers Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons. According to Hett of n-tv (2016), the “German Discounters are conquering foreign countries”,
Tesco has been particularly successful because of its powerful brand. It has a reputation for value, low prices and for being customer focused. Its brand and associations have helped the company to expand into new sectors and markets. Tesco has also been strong in public relations, advertising and building profile in catchment areas on a local level. This local approach to marketing appears to be a key driver for success. Tesco has a good range of products, including own label products. It seeks to provide excellent customer service, and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction.
The food and staples retailing is an increasingly competitive industry. The market giants (competitors) are Coles (owned by Wesfarmers) which has 741 stores across Australia and plans to add 70 m...
Numerous definitions of strategy exist, in most circumstances strategy can loosely be explained as an overall plan of deployment of resources to ascertain a favourable position within a market (Zablah, Bellenger and Johnston 2004; Grant 1994, p 14). Further, imbedded in many successful organisations are strategies, the importance of which is to remain relevant in the market, and successful in the various attributes of business; profiteering, employee motivation, maintaining sustainable core competencies, effectiveness in operation, or efficiency in the conduction of operations. Therefore challenges involved in the formulation and implementation of a strategy can revolve around the overall external market, as well as internal
The topic under review is strategic alliances. This particular form of non-equity alliance between firms in the same industry (competitors) is becoming an increasingly popular way of conducting business in the global environment. Many different reasons of why such alliances are occurring have been recognized. These include: the increasing globalization of the world's economy resulting in intensified global competition, the proliferation and disbursement of technology, and the shortening of product life-cycles. This critique will use Kenichi Ohmae's viewpoint on strategic alliances as a benchmark for comparison. Firstly, a summary of Ohmae's article will be provided. Secondly, in order to critique Ohmae's opinion, it will be necessary to review other literature on the topic. Thirdly, a discussion of the various viewpoints and studies, that have hence arisen, will be discussed in detail. Finally, conclusions will be drawn with implications for companies operating in today's global environment, together with suggestions for future research on strategic alliances.
BR was sold to Delta Foods in 1996 for US $2 billion. At this time, it was one of the largest fast-food chains in the world generating sales of US $6.8 billion. DF purchase of BR brought in a new cultural paradigm. DF is an individualistic, aggressive growth company with brands they believe are strong enough to support entry into new overseas markets without the need for local partnership. The DF strategy is one of direct acquisition and JV’s were not part of their strong suit. DF strategic implementation is based on hiring local managers directly or transferring seasoned managers from their soft drink and snack food divisions. The DF disdain for JVs is clearly reflected by their participation in only those JVs where local partnering was mandatory (e.g. China) to overcome regulatory barriers to entry. JVs had been the predominant strategy for BR which was unlike the DF outlook. Terralumen’s strategy was misaligned and out of sync with the DF strategy. This was unlike the complementarity that existed with BR’s strategy. This misalignment began to affect the JV relationship that had worked well with BR in the initial years. The failure of Terralumen and DF to recognize this fundamental cultural difference between their operational strategy styles i.e. Individualistic and Collectivism leads to their inability to proactively create steps for better alignment in the early period after acquisition, creating uncertainties and difficulties for both corporations. There is a lack of communication and virtually absence of trust between two new partners. DF appeared to be flexing its muscles in the relationship and using a more masculine approach compared to Terralumen’s more feminine approach. Both the corporations are strategically involved in a complex situation where they appear reluctant to address the issues at stake and move ahead together. The DF strategy of
The case looks at prescriptive strategy as applied to multi-product group of companies. Unilever is based in over a hundred countries where multiple products are being made in each. However, the market is mature which means that growth is stagnant and innovation is almost non-existent. In order to improve on growth and sales, the strategies that are needed look at how to come up with new products that have high profit margins and penetrate new markets. The prescriptive approach was used to come with a strategy to improve growth and profit. In order to improve on innovation, both the prescriptive and emergent strategies can be used since both support innovation. From the case study, not much profit was made when the ‘Path to Growth’ strategy was first implemented (2001-2004). The strategy was initially based on cost cutting. There was a need to also build volumes through existing portfolio of branded products through innovation and marketing. By focusing on increasing sales in developing countries where growth prospects were high and increasing investment in personal care products where profit margins were higher, it was possible to improve the profit portfolio.
Unilever is a multinational company which ranks third globally in fast moving consumer goods. They have an excellent value chain which is one of the factors that has resulted in them to be among top consumer goods company globally. Their merger and acquisitions have led them to expand their company in different sectors of the consumer goods. They have 400 brands and sell their products across 190 countries. They have to work on some areas of the value chain to work even better than how they are working now. Also, there are many opportunities that will help Unilever to overcome their shortcomings and make them a successful Consumer goods
Nowadays, firms align with other companies globally to gain a market position in that particular continent or country when parent companies cannot penetrate that market by themselves. After all, businesses that are expanding worldwide will need a partner who is familiar with cultural customs, languages, lifestyles, and the government if corporations want to acquire an intercontinental presence; so there are five factors cross-cultural business alliances should consider in a partnership.
A diversified company has two levels of strategy: business unit (or competitive) strategy and corporate (or companywide) strategy. Competitive strategy concerns how to create competitive advantage in each of the businesses in which a company competes. Corporate strategy concerns two different questions: what businesses the corporation should be in and how the corporate office should manage the array of business units.