2.0-Take-Seafood

Wal-Mart should project a community friendly, environment caring and employee welfare seeking brand image to combat. Emerging threats. Investment in sustainability initiatives like solar energy and recycling could be possible opportunities.

Whole Foods is a retailer that specializes in organic foods and it has done an excellent job of determining its target market and how to position itself. Instead of going head to head with large food retailers such as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods has found a niche market that works perfectly for itself. This niche market is one that prides itself on being health conscious and environmentally responsible and Whole Foods has done a great job of positioning itself in the same way through its environmentally safe actions and its use of the local community to stock its stores. However, as Whole Foods grows and expands, a person has to wonder if the company will be able to maintain this same position or will have to make

Neptune Gourmet Seafood is an $840 million corporation that provides premium seafood in North America. They are the 3rd largest seafood producer in the market, and have been around for 40 years, continuously providing the highest quality of product. Despite their success, they are having issues with what appears to be a temporary problem of excess inventory. Due to new coastal laws, investments in new freezer trawlers and fishing technology, Neptune’s trawlers have been able to move further out to sea to fish and maintain the quality the company has been known for. By going further out to sea, they have been bringing back larger than normal catches due to richer fishing grounds,

“Seafood is a good example. All the seafood we source here is sustainable, such as salmon and cod. We’ve also, however, started to work with local fisherman to use underutilized fish. That is, buying fish that would otherwise be considered by catch and never brought to market. So, for instance, redfish or pollock. We’re introducing students to these fish in order to make them more acceptable and mainstream.”

Planet Shrimp wants to use ‘clean’ shrimp as their main point of differentiation, highlighting their closed-loop aquaculture process that does not involve toxins and ensures environmental sustainability throughout. As consumers are continually concerned about knowing where their food comes from, the safety of their food and price point, Planet Shrimp should understand how to educate the public about the ‘clean’ shrimp movement (The Canadian Press, 2014a). To achieve this, Planet Shrimp must answer the question:

In this guideline, it is recommended that we eat more seafood than ever. A study by N.G. Nylen takes an in depth look at why environmental concerns should be accounted for when publishing these guidelines. (2) Nylen claims, “The 2010 Guidelines recommend that Americans more than double their average intake of seafood but fail to include guidance about or even to acknowledge the relative environmental impacts of different seafood choices.” (2) This is careless for a government agency to do. (2) It may be unintended on behalf of the agencies that come up with the guidelines, but it can be certainly harmful in many ways. (2) Some of the ways include an overfishing of a species and also possibly taking way too much food that other sea creatures depend on for food. (2) Not considering the sustainability and environmental impacts when making the dietary guidelines directly relates to seafood sustainability. The main reason they wanted seafood to be consumed was for more Americans to take in protein. There is other foods that Americans can consume that will also fill that need. It’s not right to just double the consumption of seafood for that

Smithfield is committed to leading the industry in operations excellence and through their sustainability initiative. To relay this commitment to its customers, Smithfield Foods and all its divisions meet a number of third-party standards. “ISO 14000 is a series of standards covering environmental management systems, environmental auditing, evaluation of environmental performance, environmental labeling, and life-cycle assessment” (Meredith, p. 100). It is an organization whose members agree to practice by certain standards and they are subject to third-party audits, goal setting and executive review. Smithfield is certified ISO 14001, and has created a whole sustainability department because “effective environmental management is critical to the success of our business and to the achievement of long-term sustainable goals” (Smithfieldfoods.com, n.d.). Smithfield also belongs to the PQA Plus, which is the National Pork Board’s Quality Assurance program to ensure U.S. pork products are of the highest standards. Smithfield’s 37 facilities are all Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certified, which means they are all subject to third-party audits. This initiative provides leadership and guidance on food safety management systems necessary for safety along the supply chain (Smithfieldfoods.com, n.d.). By adhering to all of these third-party standards, Smithfield is proving their commitment

Since Planet Shrimp is particularly passionate about its vision, alignment with strategic vision is the rated the highest out of all the decision-making criteria. It is the most feasible option because it requires working with only a select number of locations, which is most cost-effective. Moreover, Planet Shrimp will be able to sustain demand; since they are only producing a limited amount of shrimp right now, they should focus on ensuring that they can maintain a steady supply to build a strong foundation on which to further expand their network. Working with stores who are already known for their sustainable values ensures that the Planet Shrimp brand reputation is maintained. Those who understand the importance of Planet Shrimp’s values will likely be the “early adopters” and champions of their product, marketing their shrimp through word-of-mouth and organic marketing. Although there is a market within large chain grocery stores for sustainably sourced seafood (such as Loblaws), these grocery stores do not have as much of a focused message of sustainability as smaller, independent stores. Thus, Planet Shrimp’s brand identity has the potential to be diluted amongst the greater offerings of large chain stores.

Perhaps this is giving Walmart a free ride in the media/marketing as being sustainable without any parties doing their due diligence to verify the actual numbers. As Senge explained, perhaps “Walmart is using going green to offset negative press for treatment of its employees” due their recent lawsuit losses and settlements (Senge, 2010, p. 114). Although Walmart should be commended for its sustainability portfolio, I believe the results of their goals need to be looked at from proportional aspect as well as how/where Walmart sources their products.

However, to reduce cost and promote sustainability a deep engagement with every sector of the supply chain is needed. While Walmart can promote sustainability with the MSC certification program, as mentioned it is expensive and takes one year to complete. Therefore, Walmart can potentially establish their own quality control check. This will reduce cost while retaining sustainability of their supply chain. It will be cheaper and should take less than the MSC certification. Consumers are price sensitive. Therefore, it is important that Walmart retain reasonable prices for their fish. With such an internal program, it will be adventageous over the MSC certification because Walmart will be able to retain their affordable prices of their seafood while promoting sustainability.

Due to increasing environmental imbalances, it is necessary for firms to achieve competitive advantages in the area of environmental convergence as well. Wal-Mart is putting continuous efforts from a long time for environment sustainability and energy conservation. It also received Aspen Institute Energy and Environment award for Corporate Energy Efficiency in 2009. Here are a few steps that Wal-Mart has taken to encourage environmental sustainability:

Walmart is a company that has started implementing the Zero Waste program. Walmart’s goal is to one day no longer have dumpsters behind their stores and clubs, and to reach that goal Walmart is motivating their associates and suppliers around the world to find a solutions to excess food and develop ways to turn waste into revenue. On Walmart’s website they stated, “In 2011, Walmart has reduced waste in our U.S. operations by more than 80 percent, returning more than $231 million to the business last year. The reduction, which brings Walmart closer to our goal to create zero waste, has the potential to prevent 11.8 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually ("Walmart Corporate - Walmart's goal is to

Wal-Mart now has to rebuild their images, procedures on how they conduct business nationwide and how the use ethical business practices. The New York time article reported, “Wal-Mart announces new ethical and environmental principles complete by 2012”. (Robinson, 2008)

Wal-Mart also has a green goal. It claims that their environmental goal is to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy, to create zero waste and to sell products that sustain our natural resources and the environment(Wal-Mart website 2008).

Walmart consistently exams the how long the product can work, including the materials which is used in them, the factories or farms where they were made to provide sustainable products. As the world’s largest supermarket retailer, Walmart makes an important impact on the way jewelry goes from individuals to the market. They never stop searching the reform of the retailer. By integrating more sustainable fibers into the clothing and textiles, Walmart is working to provide their customers with both environmentally preferable and fashionable clothing options at the prices which they can afford. Especially for its major products in the supermarket, such as agricultural and seafood, Walmart helps farmers to expand their businesses like cluster farming, mariner reserves, to make more money and reduce the environmental impact of farming.