Marketing Perspective And Management Of Wesfarmers

Company Background

Discuss about the Marketing Perspective and Management.

The major aim of this assignment is to undertake the process of analyzing an enterprise as well as its operating environments from the marketing perspective. In the regard, Wesfarmers is selected and based on its marketing and management strategy, the entire study is aimed to be undertaken. Therefore, this study provides a brief description of this company and the industry to which Wesfarmers belongs to along with stating its mission or value statement and its product description. Moreover, this study also identifies its orientation towards marketing and gives detailed and relevant supporting evidence. On the other hand, this study also identifies and analyzes 5Cs for Wesfarmers, which incorporate company, collaborators, customers, context and competitors. Apart from that, this study also portrays how does this enterprise goes about collecting information regarding 5Cs and ensures the desires of customers. In addition, this study also analyzes threats posed by the competitors. Furthermore, this study outlines the potential marketing segments based on the market analyses those are available to Wesfarmers. Therefore, a detailed marketing mix of Wesfarmers is aimed to be justified and recommended for supporting the marketing strategy.

Company Overview

Wesfarmers Limited is the Australian Conglomerate, which predominantly interests in New Zealand and Australian retail, safety, fertilizers, chemicals, industrial and coal mining products. Wesfarmers is headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. It is the largest Australian organization with AU$ 65.98 billion by revenue, overtaking BHP Billiton and Woolworths (Wesfarmers.com.au. 2017). It is also the largest private employer with more or less 205000 employees in Australia.

Mission Statement and Value Statement

The major aim of this organization is to satisfy the customer needs through the provision of services and goods on a professional and competitive basis. The mission statement of Wesfarmers Ltd is to deliver a satisfactory return towards the shareholders. Most importantly, this organization has developed a disciplined, highly-focused and unique business culture guided by this principle. The trademark slogan of this organization is “Lowest Prices Are Just The Beginning” (Wesfarmers.com.au. 2017).

As per the value statement of this organization, underlying the mission statement, Wesfarmers adheres to the four values such as boldness, accountability, openness as well as integrity.

Marketing Orientation

According to the market orientation of Wesfarmers, it can be stated that this retail organization maintains all the perspectives of market orientation such as customer orientation, strategic, behavioral, culturally based and market intelligence perspectives as well. The major focus of market orientation of Wesfarmers is gaining the customer satisfaction. Moreover, Wesfarmers also concerns about monitoring their level of orientation and commitment to serve customer needs.

Product Description

The diverse business operations of Wesfarmers cover convenience stores, hotels, liquor and supermarkets; departmental stores; office supplies; home improvement; and industrials division with businesses in fertilizers, energy and chemicals, safety and industrial products and coal.

Company

Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunities	Threats
ü  Emphasis on the initiatives of community development ü  Key importance on performance and quality ü  Sales through online format ü  Discounts and special offers for seeking customer attraction ü  Delivering customer service and convenience ü  Huge number of in-store staff, stores and a strong workforce of over 200000	ü  Always under scrutiny for any essential decision making being a market leader ü  Limited experience in Australian ground or low geographic presence (Bull et al. 2016).	ü  Expansion outside Australia ü  Enhancing experience, service and equality benchmarks among the stores ü  Customer and employee loyalty initiatives among businesses	ü  Specialized products and services are offered by competitors at equitable levels of price ü  Economic downturn resulting to plummeted levels of consumer confidence and lower demand. ü  Wesfarmers’ business facing threats from competitors

Customers

The major customers of this organization are the general people who have the demand of buying grocery items, automotive parts, and home and lifestyle products (Hollensen 2015). The customers of Wesfarmers are generally concerned about the environmental sustainability which has resulted Wesfarmers to think about the way to maintain environmental sustainability.

Collaborators

Market Orientation of Wesfarmers

The major collaborators of Wesfarmers are their suppliers and shareholders who are the major contributors to efficiency, innovation and long-term competitiveness and sustainability of all parties (Kotler et al. 2015). Individual suppliers, trade unions and farmer representative bodies are the major partners of Wesfarmers.

Competitors

Wesfarmers’ business facing threats from its major competitors of Wesfarmers are HS Home, Woolworths, Myer, Caltex Australia and Metcash (Sheth and Sisodia 2015). The most significant threat from these competitors is economic downturn which leads to plummeted levels of consumer confidence and lower demand.

Context

Political Factors – central government of Australia has established as legislative mining environmental framework and the state government can implement different laws in the concrete scenario (Balasopoulou et al. 2016). The mining company’s exploitation should base on the approval by the state government. Coal mining is an essential division for coal mining. Thus, it essentially would concern regarding mine management to adult the different protocol.

Economic Factors – Services sector is the fastest-growing and the most important sector in Australia and occupied 71.1% GDP of Australia. In this industry, the highest value service is insurance and finance, accounted for 8% of GDP (Foxall 2014). This is a large potential market and favorable conditions for the insurance apartment in Wesfarmers.

Social factors – Numerous families in Australia are willing tp purchase the necessities of life once per week and it is enough for a week. Thus, they can be more interested in one-stop shopping. It can be effective for Wesfarmers for managing its home improvement. Department stores and supermarkets

Technological factors – Australia is one of the leaning mining countries in this world. The mining industry and resources of Australia is considered as the world leader. Moreover, it makes the combination among the most advanced technology, services, products and equipment, creating the highest production efficient of the world, promoting the mineral and safe processing, new technology and environmental protection.

Legal factors – The legal system of Australia is very sound incorporating a range of business law, natural resources law and labor law (Balasopoulou et al. 2016). These laws give the scope for management of important idea of Wesfarmers as a large organization.

Environmental Factors – Australia has huge concern about the essence of environmental sustainability that covers a huge range of environmental protection, environmental pollution prevention from the natural resources (Weinstein and Pohlman 2015). Thus, Wesfarmers is planning for increasing recycle system and decreasing product packaging being one of the largest listed companies in Australia.

The major business objective of Wesfarmers is to meet the basic demand of customers. This is simply because of the fact that the customers of Wesfarmers always have the desire that this organization would satisfy all their needs through the provision of the best services and goods (Möller and Parvinen 2015). Moreover, the customers or the consumers of Wesfarmers also expect company response in a proper manner so that they can avail all kinds of help while purchasing goods and availing their business services.

Figure 1: Comparative Study with sales growth between Wesfarmers and Woolworths

5C Analysis

(Source: Giannakis, Harker and Baum 2015, p.530)

The major competitors of Wesfarmers are Woolworth, Caltex Australia and Metcash (Fan, Lau and Zhao 2015). The most significant threat from these competitors is economic downturn which leads to plummeted levels of consumer confidence and lower demand.

In order to enhance the competitive advantage among the competitors, Wesfarmers is aiming to maintain as well as promote an open and fair competition in the marketplace. Most importantly, Wesfarmers is more focusing on protecting the consumers by requiring the proper information in the marketplace as well as fairness in business dealings where there is an inequality in the power of bargaining (Meffert 2013). This organization respects consumers by needing the exact information, acting in a fair manner in their business trading and dealings of their competitors independently.

The collaborators have played significant roles in the business operations of Wesfarmers. Fairness, integrity as well as honesty from the collaborator side are the major keywords and the integral to the way in that the business operations of Wesfarmers operate and guide the business for taking decisions (Chernev 2014). The suppliers and the other collaborators of Wesfarmers do not participate in any kind of unethical or illegal activity which would ultimately harm norms of Wesfarmers. Moreover, the collaborators also perform their duties with diligence and care and seek for achieving excellence in their roles towards the organization.

Choice of Target Market

Selection of target market is very essential before performing any business operation. In this regard, the shoppers of automotive parts, grocery shoppers as well as the shoppers of lifestyle and home products are the major segments for the business operations of Wesfarmers (Referred to Appendix 1). On the other hand, the shoppers, who are seeking services, discounts, variety as well as convenience can also be considered as the target group for this organization.

The basic definition of the value proposition lies in the promise of value to be acknowledged, communicated as well as delivered. Moreover, it can also be referred to the belief from the customer regarding how the value would be delivered, acquired as well as experienced (Giannakis, Harker and Baum 2015). After identifying and discussing the target market for Wesfarmers, the value proposition for this organization can be assessed based on the value creating business model implemented by Wesfarmers.

Robust Financial capacity – According to the value creating business model of Wesfarmers, the robust financial capacity of Wesfarmers can effectively deal with the access towards the competitively priced equity and debt (Meffert 2013).

Superior People Resources – According to the value proposition set by the value creating business model of Wesfarmers, the superior people resources of this enterprise mainly incorporates the capability of attracting, retaining as well as motivating great people as the major shareholders and stakeholders of this business organization.

Strong Corporate Infrastructure – As per the value proposition context of Wesfarmers for its target market, the strong corporate infrastructure incorporates the culture, processes as well as the systems for supporting the innovation, sustainable operations and disciplined execution (Peñaloza, Toulouse and Visconti 2013).

Information Collection about 5C

A Portfolio for Quality Businesses – according to the value creating business model of Wesfarmers, this organization aims to set a portfolio for quality business (Iacobucci 2014). On the other hand, Wesfarmers has positioned their business operations for the future growth such as in fast-growth industries or sectors or with the unexploited competitive scopes.

Value Adding Transactions – Wesfarmers successfully implements the value adding transaction which leads to the capability of acquiring and recognizing the undervalued assets. 1Moreover, it can also create the skill for turning around and growing those assets in terms of value proposition for the target market of Wesfarmers (Bickhoff, Hollensen and Opresnik 2014). On the other hand, these transactions can also be directly derived with the discipline to exit while value has been implemented for shareholders.

Long-term Superior Financial Performance – It would result in the above market TSR or Total Shareholder Return over long to medium term (Banterle et al. 2014).

A Most-Admired Organization – Most importantly, as per the value proposition of Wesfarmers for their target market, it would result in generating superior reputation among consumers, suppliers, employees as well as the community.

Figure 2: Value Creating Business Model of Wesfarmers

(Source: Bull et al. 2016, p.100)

As per the positioning of Wesfarmers business operation, this organization has diversified business with the stores such as Target, Officeworks, Warehouse, Bunnings, Kmart and Coles.

Product – Wesfarmers should ensure to have the proper and appropriate product which has high demand for the market. Therefore, the marketers of Wesfarmers sho8uld do an extensive research on the product lifecycle during the phase of product development that they are creating (Balasopoulou et al. 2016). Therefore, the marketers of Wesfarmers should implement the proper product mix. On the other hand, the products of Wesfarmers should have an appropriate life cycle that incorporates the sales decline phase, maturity phase as well as the growth phase. Thus it is very crucial for the marketers for reinventing the Wesfarmers’ products for stimulating more demand once it reaches the phase of sales decline.

Price – The marketers of Wesfarmers should make a consideration regarding the perceived value that the product offers while setting the product price. Wesfarmers marketers should follow three major pricing strategies such as neutral pricing, market skimming pricing as well as market penetration pricing (Huang and Sarigöllü 2014). It would always help this organization for shaping the perception of the Wesfarmers product in the eyes of their consumers. The marketers should remember always that a low price generally means an inferior good for the consumers as they can easily compare Wesfarmers products with its competitors.

Place – Wesfarmers should have to position as well as distribute their products in such a place that can be easily accessible towards the potential purchasers. It mainly comes with the deep understanding regarding the target market of Wesfarmers (Datta, Ailawadi and van Heerde 2016). The marketers should understand them inside out as well as they can be able to discover the most efficient distribution and positioning channels that speak directly with the Wesfarmers market. Most importantly, the marketers of Wesfarmers should plan for overseas expansion of the business operation of this organization for making its global recognition. Moreover, Wesfarmers marketers should follow four significant distribution strategies such as selective, franchising, exclusive and intensive distribution strategies.

Promotion – It is a very essential component of marketing strategy for the organizations in any kind of business world because it can boost the sales as well as brand recognition of Wesfarmers. Promotion consists of several elements such as sales promotion, advertising, public relations and sales organization (Leonidou, Katsikeas and Morgan 2013). Most important fact along with this element for Wesfarmers is that, the combination of the promotional strategies and the way through which marketers would go about promotion would depend always on budget of the organization, the message Wesfarmers want to convey and the target market of this Australian Conglomerate. 

Conclusion

After discussing the entire study, it can easily be stated that Wesfarmers has become one of the most successful conglomerates in Australia due to its proper marketing strategy development. Wesfarmers is successfully dealing with the diverse business operation, which has ultimately helped this organization to make a strong place in the Australian market and gain a huge competitive advantage over its potential rival organization. Along with the success factors, this study has also identified as well as analyzed the disadvantageous factors for this organization. Moreover, this study has also properly recognized all the threats coming from the rival enterprises of Wesfarmers. However, the most important factor associated with this study is that, an effective and an appropriate marketing mix strategy along with its four elements have been portrayed, which have driven the recommending way through which the threats as well as the weaknesses of this business organization would be overcome in a proper way.

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