Marketing Cluster May 9, 2012 Cardon Carpet Mills, Inc. Case Study The Cardon Carpet Mills Company is a carpet company that distributes its line through seven different floorcovering wholesalers around the United States. This company focuses on manufacturing a full line of medium to high priced carpet primarily used residentially. The senior executives, looking to integrate direct distribution and bypassing wholesalers, are seeking the best outlet for increasing profit. With increased pressure from retailers to shave their profit margins to accommodate pricing demands the wholesalers wanted Cardon Carpet Mills to consider a reduction in its prices. This will play a large part in how the company will decide if direct distribution is a …show more content…
So far, the company has stayed afloat with the 4,000 retail accounts and advertising strategies. However, if Cardon Carpet Mills decides to establish distribution centers, they have opportunities in other markets such as Dallas and Atlanta. This alternative will add to their expenses as well as cause a rift in their long-term relationship with the seven wholesalers, so it is important to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages to continuing with current wholesalers or opening more warehouses. Porter’s five forces can be used by senior management to assist in the decision-making process on whether or not to venture into direct distribution. The first force to be evaluated is the threat of new entrants into the floorcovering market. Cardon Carpet Mills must be aware of the likelihood that new competition may enter the market and target their customer. In the floorcovering market, however, Cardon Carpet Mills does not need to put much energy into preparing for new entrants. The number of competitors began to shrink in the 1980s due to mergers and acquisitions. The number of floorcovering manufacturers decreased from over 300 in the 1980s to near 100 by 2000 (Kerin and Peterson). The demand for floorcoverings has decreased enough for Cardon Carpet Mills to observe that the attraction to the industry is minimal for new entrants as well as existing companies. The second force for management to consider is the existing
Porter’s Five Forces (1980), named after Michael E. Porter, is a critical framework to access the level of risk and degree of potential profitability of each industry in which firms are competing. Specifically, five forces are shown in Figure 1, are includes competition between rivalry, potential of new entrant, threat of substitute products, and pressure on bargaining power of suppliers and customers.
Porter’s Five Forces described by Michael Porter in his classic 1979 Harvard Business Review article gave tremendous insight that began a revolution in marketing strategy (President & Fellows of Harvard College, n.d.). The Porter five forces continue to help companies like Dyson compete in competitive industries and aid them in being successful (President & Fellows of Harvard College, n.d.). Well-established rivals in the vacuum industry including Maytag, Hoover, Oreck, Kirby, and Bissell do exist and present a constant threat to the company. However, following an examination of the bargaining power that Dyson have in the market Dyson’s decision to manufacture its products in the Far East allows operating and building costs to be minimized. These choices
The retail industry is a highly competitive and mature. For this reason, above-average returns can only be obtained by competitive actions and responses against competitors. Porter five forces model will be used to analysis the development and competition situation in retail industry.
Porter’s five forces model is a tool that simple but powerful that help business people understand the relative attractiveness of an industry and the industry’s competitive pressures. Porter alluded to these forces as the micro environment, to balance it with the more broad term macro environment. They comprise of those strengths near an organization that influence its capacity to serve its clients and make a benefit. An adjustment in any of the forces ordinarily require a business unit to re-evaluate the market place given the general change in industry information. The general business engaging quality does not mean that each firm in the business will give back the same benefit. Buyer powers, supplier power, threat of substitute product and
The first of Porter’s Five Forces is the threat of new entrants. According to the case study, there has been a wave of new entrants to the retail industry. These include Best Buy, Costco, Wal-Mart, Old Navy and the recently irrelevant, Target Canada. The second force, the threat of substitute products or services, is also prevalent in the retail market. Inevitably, the target audience that the Hudson’s Bay Company is trying to cater to, will shop at other retail stores for the same goods due to consumers behaviours and preferences. Another impacting force is the bargaining power of suppliers. However, this force does not play as large of an impact to HBC as one might initially assume. Traditionally, HBC among other large retail stores makes a large percentage of their
Wholesale and retail distribution in the U.S. carpet and rug industry has gone through a lot of instabilities since the 1980’s. There have been three major competitive trends that occurred within the industry. The first trend to occur happened in the mid 1980’s when the
The first of Porter’s Five Forces that impact Costco is the threat of new entrants. The threat of new entrants into the wholesale and membership retail space is low. There are several reasons why the threat of entrants into the market is low. The leading reason why the threat of entry is low is because an emerging company will struggle to have the volume necessary to compete with Costco. Costco is the sixth largest retailer in the U.S. As a major retailer, Costco has the highest discounts on a majority of its
At its core, Porter’s 5 forces describes a firms overall ability to compete in a market. We discuss our analysis of the 5 forces and how they affect SAS Corporation and its stakeholders. Please examine Figure 1.1 to view a diagram that depicts the 5 forces.
2. How Porter's Five Forces of Competition impact the company Porter set out his famous Five Forces model in chapter 1 of his 1980 Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, which has now become the dominant paradigm for the "Structural Analysis of Industries." The model places supply chain forces on the horizontal access and market structure vertically above and below industry competition, which they all point to as the center of potential profitability (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson,
1. Williams-Sonoma has experienced strong growth in the past year, but this is on the back of a strong economy and in particular a strong new home market. The furniture business is strongly correlated with the strength of the real estate market. In this respect, the company's strategy is largely irrelevant, because within the next five years the real estate bubble will burst and Williams-Sonoma will suffer a major downturn in its own results as a consequence. However, this reality shows that the company perhaps lacks sufficient differentiation, and can only be expected to perform roughly in line with the housing market. It is neither outperforming competitors nor is it underperforming. W-S has sufficient differentiation within the furnishings and home products segment, and has a fairly strong brand name in the segment. The company's status as a mass-market premium company allows it to grow strongly in strong economic times, but also makes it particularly vulnerable to economic downturn, because not only do consumers redecorate at greater intervals, but they will trade down to more affordable stores when they do.
An industry analysis through Porter’s Five Forces reveals that market forces are favorable for profitability.
Cartwright is a retail distributor of lumber products. It built its competitive edge based on pricing and having a careful control over its operations. The company reported an operating income of $86,000 and $111,000 in 2003 and 2004, respectively. This is a 29% increase in operating income in one year, which shows the firm’s strong ability to generate cash. The firm’s account receivables and inventory are increasing from year to year which is a good sign of a growing business. Cartwright is not an asset intensive company. It does not have to have huge fixed assets; most of its assets are cash, accounts receivable and inventory which all depend on future sales. Sourcing of materials is managed very well, purchased at discounts most of the time and contribute to having lower prices.
In his article “The five competitive forces that shape strategy“, Michael Porter (2008) updates and extends his “five forces” framework he first introduced in 1979 and which has influenced the academic and business research for decades. He reaffirms that “THREAT OF ENTRY”, “THE POWER OF SUPPLIERS”, “THE POWER OF BUYERS”, THE THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES”, and “RIVALRY AMONG EXISTING COMPETITORS” are the forces that shape every single industry, and a thorough understanding of such forces help analyze everything from the intensity of competition to the profitability and attractiveness of any industry. The framework has two dimensions; the vertical dimension that connects
In addition to above mentioned, Porters five Forces (Supplier Power, Buyer Power, Competitive Rivalry, Threat of Substitution, Threat of New Entry) analysis can help to understand more about how Les Mills can improve in the future and what would be the problem to do so. Suppliers power shows that it is very important to find a good supplier for the company, as the competitors arise, sometime the company may need to go into a price fight, but if the supplier keep putting the price higher and higher this would be extreme difficult for the company to compete with other (James Manktelow, 2014). For example for Les Mills, if Les Mills usually bought high price equipment so that to cause their product’s cost is at a very high price and can’t put the price low. Therefore, they might experience a lost. Buyer power is also very important for the company, each
Porter’s five forces analysis not only provides the ideas to create the strategic plan but also assesses the attractiveness of an industry.