Business Case Analysis of Mass Merchandisers

Macy Inc. (M) has a cost structure that can best be viewed using SWOT analysis, which is a way of evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the corporation. Macy’s strengths include customer loyalty, a recognizable store name, use of technology, a substantial supply chain, its comprehensive size, and the locations of its stores. In total, these strengths enable Macy Inc. to provide a unique service that offers a characteristic their competitors do not have: merchandise tailored to the customer by store and climate zone. Macy’s main weakness is its cost structure: costs are high compared to their competitors due to a complete operational transformation that includes localizing merchandise by

The team will continue to spearhead this effort making concessions for team synergies and roadblocks. This effort may also require the participation of the Digital and Chief Marketing Officer (Walgreens At the Corner of Happy and Healthy Newsroom) to ensure brand recognition and a marketing strategy for this launch. Action plans include identifying what brand the merged organization will be identified as for both employees internally and customers externally. In addition implementation plans will need to be developed to ensure the synergy occurs within the 2 year timeframe. Representatives from each functional area will need to be included to ensure buy-in to the new structure and alignment. Using the newly created operating processes and procedures each function can identify the means for integration and implementation in their respective

In the operating level, the biggest objective of the Best Buy operating department is to expand its growth domestically and internationally and reduced its operating expenditures in-store. By 2012, the total number of stores in US is 1103, opened 7 and closed 3. In the same year, the total number of stores in Europe, Canada, China, and Mexico are 2393, 256, and 204, 8 respectively, opened 145, 31, 41, and 2 respectively, closed 109, 2, and 3 respectively (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 2012). However, Best Buy operating department is not able to achieve its second objective until it implements a good strategy to reduce these expenditures.

Businesses everywhere are having to deal with current trends in both products and services. Society today being very fast pace and demanding instant satisfaction with retailers and online service providers, there can be many complications that arise with different features we see in industries today. We see that consumers want large variety, fast check outs, and comforting environments as they shop throughout different types of stores. This is specifically true for grocery stores. According to their official website, Wegmans is a regional supermarket chain with over 90 stores catering the northern part of the east coast. This company possesses many assets, including over 47,000 employees, multi billion dollars in annual sales as of 2015, and is currently holding the 33rd position in the top 75 supermarkets based on sales volume. (Wegmans, 2016, para. 1) With such a large number of assets, there are a lot of moving parts to keep this company running effectively and efficiently. To understand how Wegmans has become so profitable in recent years, one must take a closer look at their operations management. With Wegmans

Expenses The suppliers have very little power to demand their personalized prices because there are large numbers of suppliers available in the markets. Higher prices will rally retail giants to switch their suppliers, which forces many suppliers to offer price discounts and bundle offers against their supplies in order to remain in the business. After acquiring May Company in 2008/2009 Macy’s made some organizational change, so vendors would give them credit for being their largest customer and improve working relationship. This would lead to a major drop of inventory expenses which is the key for Macy’s.

They expect to see increased profits from our market shift efforts by the end of Year 2. Over the next three years they expect lower profits and make inroads into this tough market. We estimate that they will be able to reduce marginal costs and increase overall profitability by Year 3 or Year 4 as we grow and take advantages of economies of scale

Target vendors will now be faced with “stepping out on faith” not knowing whether the adjustments made to their business and products will help Target in the decrease of showrooming. Target’s vendors are risking the customer-favoring the price and the design of the product. Vendors will begin to wonder will they be able to profit from the change or will it drive them into the ground. They will ponder on the difference being cost efficient or will it drive up the costs to develop the product. The vendors could start to use “in store only” on some of the prices of the products to make sure that competition cannot copy the prices just as well as “online only”. Hopefully doing this will make customers go to the store to purchase at a reasonable

Although there are similarities between the disclosures, there are many differences in how the companies share these innovations. One example is the variation in the report location of the majority of the disclosures among the companies. Delta Apparel disclosed its innovations primarily in the Management Discussion and Analysis Section. Hain and Hershey spread out the disclosures a bit more and included them in the Address to Shareholders along with the Management Discussion and Analysis Section. The Advanced Environment Recycling took a different approach and put the majority of their disclosures in Part 1, Item 1 Business. Foment Economico Mexicano included disclosures in innovation throughout their entire report with some places such as:

One of the largest retailer in the United States is known to many of us as Wal-Mart; boasting over 3,500 domestic stores in the United States, with continued growth in their numbers…and about 1,300 locations in Canada, Mexico, the UK (only Western), Germany, Asia and South America (Mergent). Many of these stores include Supercenters, Sam’s Clubs, and smaller Neighborhood Market centers. Wal-Mart primary focus is on based on six strategic merchandise units: grocery, entertainment, hardlines, health and wellness, apparel, and items for the home (Mergent). Since the begininning of the company in 1962, Wal-Mart has skillful continued growth and prosperity. With their long standing history of profitability and prominence thoughout North

Though supplier power is high in the retail discounting industry, Wal*Mart changed the game with their two-step hub-and-spoke distribution network. Though building 1,000,000 square foot distribution centers seems costly, it allows Wal*Mart to purchase from their suppliers at a significantly reduced cost and deliver to their stores with 48 hours, sometimes even 24 hours. The network’s become so effective that 80% of their inventory comes directly from these 27 centers. In contrast, Kmart has only 50% of their products coming from distribution centers with a full half being shipped directly from suppliers into their stores, thus raising costs to Kmart and their customers. Systems such as “cross-docking” are also aiding Wal*Mart in their fight to streamline every process by reducing inventory and restocking costs.

The reduction of overhead cost by combining operations of the two companies as a single corporate entity could lead to significant cost saving, an increase in profit or revenue per employee (Buckley and Casson, 1996). For example, by the elimination of duplicate resources/branch such as IT facility and integration of some of its stores into Sainsbury outlets. Argos can meet its goal to improve Universal appeal while providing for a lean cost base. The acquisition could lead to faster growth, due to the possibility of broader market network integration (Bodislav and Iovitu, 2014). This may include the ability of Argos customers to benefit from Sainsbury’s food stores at a discounted price and collection of orders made at Argos stores at local Sainsbury stores. Thus, bringing Argos stores into Sainsbury stores will accelerate its strategy for achieving a larger product range, choices, and faster service delivery. In this regard, the acquisition deal is positive as the parent deal shares similar values ‘whenever, wherever they want to shop’. However, such integration resulting from the acquisition could also affect the efficiency of business operation due to differences in organisational structure and culture (Bodislav and Iovitu, 2014). Restructuring can be very expensive, time-consuming, and quite often creates new organisational problems because it takes time for

This company consumes segment growth that can be exposed to different supplies that will broaden Walmart’s current stores, and alter the locations of the company distribution centers. In this case it creates a panel that requires a large amount of sum of principal. The high cost load for the extension of their stores has to be less; these initiatives have proven to be highly active on a complete foundation (“Walmart”, 2009). Though this might not build a short-range

American Apparel, is an American multi-national clothing manufacturer, distributor and retailer since 1988based in Los Angeles, California. Dov Charney, a Canadian business man was a founder and former CEO of the company. He was involved in nearly every part of the business process from design and manufacturing to marketing. The Ernst & Young named Charney Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004. He was also termed "Man of the Year" by various fashion

American Apparel is a clothing industry knows for its passion, ethical practices and innovations. The employees at American Apparel are getting 50 times more than the employees are getting in Bangladesh. The employees at American Apparel are paying so much in a reference to have careers to build up not just the jobs in hand. From 2002, they used to call it Sweatshop-free.

Supervalu Incorporation is one of the largest grocery stores in the United States with more than 2,400 stores, among these stores the corporation also outsources to third parties which are not named in this discussion (Edmonds, Tsay & Old, 2011). However, grocery stories that are the best known that are in-house under the ownership of Supervalu are as followed; Albertson, Farm Fresh, Jewel-Osco and Save-a-lot (Edmonds, Tsay, & Old, 2011). On January 12th, 2010 Supervalu made the decision to reduce items from their present time inventory. The reduction would reduce the cost of production by 25% from the last segment production earnings of 240,000 (Edmonds, Tsay & Old, 2011). In this discussion, we will try to deduce the effect and impact that will result in Supervalu decision to reduce or eliminate an item from their inventory (Edmonds, Tsay & Old, 2011).