Discuss about the Gaining and sustain competitive advantage.
The report helps in analyzing the different kind of functional strategies that can be used by the respective company named Woolworths based in Sydney, Australia. The different kind of analysis is required to be done on the achievement of superior efficiency in comparison to the competitors. The analysis is required to be done on the material management of the company as this will help in solving the different kind of processes that is used by them such as Just-In-Time process. The analysis of the reasons of achieving superior efficiency in terms of different products and services has to be analyzed effectively.
The main aim and purpose of the report is to understand the different functional strategies as this will help the respective company named Woolworths in achieving the superior kind of efficiency in the entire competitive market.
The structure of the report will include analysis of the different functional strategies that will help in solving the issues and gaining superior efficiency. The processes used by the company have to be analyzed along with reasons for achieving superior efficiency in terms of goods and services as well.
Woolworths is one of the largest supermarket food chains based in Sydney, Australia. It is the company that has extensive retail kind of interest through New Zealand and Australia. Woolworths Supermarket was founded in the year 1924 in the month of September. The supermarket is operating in more than 996 stores across Australia with more than 115000 team members along with distribution centers. The revenue earned by the respective supermarket is 5900 crores AUD till the year 2017 and they are succeeding in the market as well.
The mission of the company is to satisfy the customers as well as the partners with the unique experience of shopping that offers proper quality and price based on commitment of the employees.
The vision of the company is to be independent along with innovative in which the different customers are able to choose from the different wide range of the different goods at reasonable prices.
Woolworths is famous for providing different kind of goods and services to their customers at an affordable rate. The main motive of the supermarket is to gain competitive advantage in the market by offering wide range of products and services in an effective manner as this will help in being more innovative in nature as well.
Woolworths is one of the largest supermarket chains that is based in Sydney, Australia (Woolworths.com.au., 2018). Proper analysis is required to be done in order to understand the different techniques that will help them in gaining superior efficiency over the other competitors namely Wesfarmers and ALDI. Proper external analysis is required to be done by Woolworths as this will help them in providing ideas about the different moves of their competitors and it will help Woolworths in gaining cost advantage and differentiation advantage as well. Proper PEST analysis is required to be done by Woolworths as to understand the strategies used by other competitors (Barney, 2014).
With the help of PEST analysis, Woolworths has implemented three strategies that includes the following:
The pricing along with range strategy has to be analyzed effectively wherein they have implemented the strategy to neutralize the Coles and contain impact of ALDI on sales of Woolworths. Furthermore, the lean retail model has been used to drive the three-year plans of growth wherein it has helped them in delivering $500 million of the cost reduction across the FY 2015-2016. With the help of the lean retail mode and pricing and range strategy, it has helped Woolworths in gaining superior competitive advantage in an effectual manner.
Porter’s Five forces model analysis can be done by Woolworths as to tackle the situation as this will help them in understanding their scope and gain competitive advantage.
Woolworths Supermarket has maintained the material management in the above manner as this has helped in understanding the handling the materials in an effectual manner. Woolworths has applied the Just-In-Time process as most effective in nature wherein it is the strategy that is employed by the different companies as to employ more efficiency and decrease the wastage of goods by receiving such goods when they are required in the process of production. This kind of strategy helps in reducing the cost of inventory as well and this requires the producers to analyze the demand in an accurate manner.
Woolworths has applied the Just-In-Time inventory management system wherein they receive the different kind of dairy and other products that can be damaged in a short span of time. With the help of this strategy, Woolworths has been able to decrease the wastage of goods and it has helped them in gaining more profit as the inventory costs has been reduced as well. A separate department has been created by the supermarket wherein they inform the higher officials when there is requirement of such products and they are sold on daily basis as well. This kind of strategy has helped Woolworths in avoiding the wastage and this is also known as Toyota Production System (Rothaermel, 2015).
Figure 1: Just-In-Time Model
(Source: Ginter, Duncan & Swayne, 2018)
From the above diagram, it can be analyzed that the respective strategy is flexible and reliable for the supermarket as this will help in small lot delivery of the different parts with the philosophy of Just-In-Time and this has helped the entire company in gaining competitive advantage in comparison to the other companies in the competitive market. Woolworths has tried to gain huge profit along with revenue with the respective philosophy wherein they have reduced the inventory cost (Johnson, 2016).
Woolworths achieve superior quality of different products and services in the competitive market by implementation of different kind of strategies. Woolworths need to analyze the principles that have to be achieved by them as to gain more competitive advantage and attract more customers in the competitive market as well. The five principles that has been analyzed by Woolworths are as follows:
It has been seen that there are different competitors in the market of Woolworths wherein they apply different kind of strategies that helps them in gaining more competitive advantage. Furthermore, Woolworths has applied the different strategies that include:
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that Woolworths has tried to gain competitive and superior advantage in the entire market against the different competitors with the help of analysis of external factors. The PEST and Porter’s five forces analysis has been done as this has helped the company in tackling the situations. The Just-In-Time approach has been adopted by the company as this helped in analyzing their competitive advantage position.
Therefore, it can be recommended that the respective company Woolworths need to improve their products and services in comparison to competitors wherein they have to introduce products and services for the old age individuals. The respective company needs to understand the material management concept as this will help them in gaining more competitive advantage.
References
Barney, J. B. (2014). Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Pearson higher ed.
Bettis, R. A., Ethiraj, S., Gambardella, A., Helfat, C., & Mitchell, W. (2016). Creating repeatable cumulative knowledge in strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 37(2), 257-261.
Cohen, J. F., & Olsen, K. (2015). Knowledge management capabilities and firm performance: A test of universalistic, contingency and complementarity perspectives. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(3), 1178-1188.
Ginter, P. M., Duncan, J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The Strategic Management of Healthcare Organizations. John Wiley & Sons.
Hill, C. W., Jones, G. R., & Schilling, M. A. (2014). Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach. Cengage Learning.
Johnson, G. (2016). Exploring strategy: text and cases. Pearson Education.
Morschett, D., Schramm-Klein, H., & Zentes, J. (2015). Strategic international management (pp. 978-3658078836). Springer.
Rothaermel, F. T. (2015). Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education.
Slack, N. (2015). Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Steinbach, A. L., Holcomb, T. R., Holmes, R. M., Devers, C. E., & Cannella, A. A. (2017). Top management team incentive heterogeneity, strategic investment behavior, and performance: A contingency theory of incentive alignment. Strategic Management Journal, 38(8), 1701-1720.
Woolworths(2018). Retrieved from https://www.woolworths.com.au/
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download