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The main elements of Costco’s strategy
The main elements of Costco’s strategy
The main elements of Costco’s strategy
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SWOT Analysis
Costco Wholesale
Strengths
• High Quality in low prices
• Employee relationship Weakness
• Offer Limited products
• Low Profit margin and high wages
Opportunities
• Expansion into other States
• Growing trend of online retail shopping Threats
• Sam’s Club
• Increased health care cost
Strengths
The biggest strength for Costco is the high quality products in competitive prices. Costco customers do not hesitate to buy unfamiliar brands because of the positive image of the company. Best quality in best prices is one of the attribute that brings Costco customers back to the warehouse. This has allowed the company to grow its market share and increased its customers.
Costco value its full time as well as part time employees. Its
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Customer usually prefers a large array of the products and a one-stop shop options. Its competitors like Wal-Mart and Home depot offers a large selection of the products. Thus, limited product offering may act as a competitive disadvantage for Costco.
Costco’s philosophy of giving high salary to the employees while maintain low margins may reduce the company revenue significantly in the long term.
Opportunities:
Costco is currently the second largest retail store in the world after Wal-Mart. It has 672 ware house in United States. The company operates in many other countries apart from U.S and Canada. Costco has a major opportunity in China and India. If the company opens up its warehouse in these two countries, it will attract more customers.
Increase in the online shopping is also a good opportunity for Costco. The biggest fear for the customers while shopping online is the distrust and poor quality of the product. Costco already has a very positive image in the society. Customers would not hesitate to buy online even the products like furniture. Thus, help Costco to decrease its inventory cost and may give competitive advantage over Amazon.
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For example if some woman is using Ajex liquid dish soap to wash dishes for ages and you ask her to try another brand, she may refuse even if the other brand is better or cost effective.
Conformation Bias:
Conformation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. (Ref: Wikipedia.org)
This kind of biasness occurs when people remember or recall information selectively in order to confirm their prior beliefs. For example, people who believe that Asians are more creative and hardworking people then the rest of the world. Whenever they meet a person that is both, Asian and hardworking they place a greater importance to their prior belief. This individual might even find out proof to further back up his/her belief.
Conformation bias not only affects how people recall information but it also influences how they gather information. For example if a particular individual believes in gun control. He will seek news and stories that endorse the limitations of gun ownership. When he hears the news of gun, shooting in the media it supports his prior opinion about gun control.
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
There are ten elements needed to survive a zombie apocalypse: a steady food supply, clean water, medicine, transportation, gas, a defense system, a sturdy shelter, a safe place to sleep within the shelter, weapons, and simple tools. Costco supplies all of these items. According an article in The Concordian, “If you asked 100 people where they would hide during a zombie apocalypse, 98 would say Costco. Costco is a vast market that sells basically anything you would need to live there permanently” (Menexis). Unfortunately that still leaves those two out of one hundred people that disagree. Those people say that Costco would be an unwise place to be during the apocalypse because of its sheer size. They state that the massive size of a Costco store is too big for a person or even small group of people to defend. While this argument has a logical line of thinking behind it, there are several factors that render this viewpoint invalid. Costco does not need a huge defense system because it is literally a huge warehouse. This means that Costco is essentially a huge concrete box with two ope...
Promotion: Costco doesn’t have any conventional marketing/ promotion strategies like their competitors as they are not big on advertising. They email and mail their members flyers and product descriptions which help them maintain their customer retention. However, they don’t actively advertise to new customers, primarily relying on their current customers to advertise by word of mouth like Kimberley Peterson, the
Their ability to distribute the cut rate from their operating proficiencies in supply chain management and cash flow, permits them to offers items at discounted rate and a lower price than their competitors. For Costco the meaning of being the low-cost provider while also differentiating from the competitors is ambiguous at best. Costco’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, is certain that low priced, and the high value merchandises are exactly what is needed maintain and achieve a staying power in the industry. Costco also entices their customers with low prices on designated set apart products available only at their stores. Within these designated products, Costco provides a limited selection of nationwide brand-named merchandises in some wide categories. Their approach comprises of selling a limited number of items, keep their costs down, maintain a high volume, compensate employees well, ensure that customers buy their memberships, and target upscale small-business owners through their business only
Confirmation Bias: A perfect example would pertain to when the victims of sexual assault from the University of North Carolina stuck together, they bonded when no one else would listen and believe them. They sought out each other and many others around the United States as the film continued until they had proven their point. The two women, Andrea and Annie just kept moving forward while avoiding those that
This essay describes how Costco has undergone evolutionary changes from its inception to present through its value chain model to become a success story. For example, in its distribution system, Costco utilizes the cross-docking technology to help in the conveyance of products in the different locations. This ensures that there are no product delays in the respective markets (Guo, 2016). Accordingly, Costco can attract more customers who prefer the warehousing services provided by the company.
Strengths: low price, strong brand name, excellent merchandise, exceptional employees, huge membership base, economies of scale, efficient distribution and operation.
... This could become the third solid country of operation that Costco needs to offset its increasing costs. Strengthening the Costco name in its burgeoning market of Mexico will help offset merchandising costs by increasing store loyalty and sales. By increasing its market share in Mexico, Costco will be able to have more income to offset the merchandising costs and it can then have the necessary capital to continue its growth; thus solving key issues 2 & 3.
In “Why Facts Don’t Change our Minds” by Elizabeth Kolbert, She emphasizes that people continuously ignore facts and logic presented to them unless it goes along with their beliefs. This is called the confirmation bias. Specifically, she talks about a study conducted by Stanford University. In this study they have a group of students that believe in capital punishment read an article that is against capital punishment. The other group who is against capital punishment read a pro capital punishment article. Not surprisingly, these people didn’t change their view on capital punishment, instead they ended up agreeing with their future beliefs even more. This is a great example of confirmation bias and the backfire effect.
A majority of the population has or will gain a bias towards or against a person, place, object, or concept, an example of one of these people is Truman Capote, a successful homosexual writer. He grew up as a openly feminine, gay man, who was neglected by his parent. As his father abandoned him for being different and his mother, an alcoholic, left him with relatives for many years. From this neglect he turned to writing. Wanting to create an interesting new book, he found a news clipping relating to the unsolved murder of the Clutter family. With his interest peaked, he left for Kansas to search for information to figure out the mystery. Using the information he gained from questioning the townspeople and even the murderers themselves, he
Thirdly, the company is committed to delivering superior quality of products and services. It earned a reputation of a convenient and reliable brand that offers the lowest prices, one of the fastest and lowest shipping, widest selection of goods, and many additional features with its services.
All humans are biased in one way or another, it is human nature. Bias is when one thinks their way is the only way, and has no care about others beliefs. Bias is thinking people who do not share the same views are wrong. Bias can be based on multiple things. Bias just comes down to the person. When someone is bias arguments have no end because a person has already made a judgement and will stick to it. People who are bias think it is their way or the highway. When bias is brought into the real world it can cause problems with unseen effects and in the media frenzy that has dominated news for years bias gets in the way of informative news.
Some say that our identity is only established in the presence of others, that we all seek acceptance and empowerment in one way or another. The confirmation bias is a manifestation of those desires, causing us to unconsciously seek confirmation through evidence or news that voice our concerns. So people might unknowingly find news that validify their pre-existing beliefs, thereby helping the media, or those standing behind them, ease the process of manufacturing consent. If you do not believe this applies to you, are you aware of the bias blind spot, a cognitive bias exhibited by most people in which they recognize the biased way of thinking in other people but fail to recognize it in their
The bias happens in two ways, first when we have strong personal attributions and second when we tend to make more personal attribution about the behavior of the others people. Also there is a term the fundamental attribution error who refers when we overestimate the role of personal factors and when we don’t take care of the impact of situations. This error is related and with the correspondence bias, when for instance we attribute behaviors to people’s behaviors without to know the factor motivating the behavior. Sometimes we know about the circumstances but we overlook them and instead we are guessing that this person always acts this way. It is important to know our biases so we can start to correct
You imagine that you are having a friend who used to have only pizza. But some of your other friends used to say that he used to take other food items. In this case, the wrong interpreted information is saved in your conscious level. So when others reveal information against you opinion automatically you will be hesitating to receive that information from that source which didn’t support your argument and you will be trying to gather information that supports your argument. This is an example for one type of cognitive bias which is known as confirmative bias.