1. How does Trader Joe’s design jobs for increased job satisfaction and higher performance?
“Trader Joe’s has designed jobs to increase job satisfaction by showing appreciation in providing more benefits to their employees than other chain grocers. They provide starting benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, company-paid retirement, paid vacation, and a 10% employee discount, Pg. w-100.” Traders Joes also recruits people with certain personality traits that the company wants in their stores. They are able to enrich their employees with knowledge of their products that they are selling, as well as inducing customer involvements. As a result, they are able to have higher job performance because they are able to train and
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By doing so, Trader Joe’s adds value to their employees. Secondly, Trader Joe’s hires managers only within the company, partly because they know the system inside and out. Their knowledge of how their system works is the human capital, because an outside manager would not have the experience and in depth knowledge as would the person who was hire within the company.
4. Explain the value chain as it pertains to Trader Joe’s.
Trader Joe’s value chain consist of it buyers that travel all over the world in search of great tasting food and beverages to buying directly from the producer whenever possible. The company itself is part of the internal value chain where they purchase their wholesome products to their staffing in employees. Customers add value to their chain because they trust Trader Joe’s to offer the most nutritious, sustainable, and organic food, pg. w-100.
5. Research Question: What do the blogs and current news reports say? Is Trader Joe’s management benchmark for others to follow? In what areas relevant to Organizational Behavior does the firm have an edge on the competition?
Current news report describes Trader Joe’s as a “trendy grocery store with cult like following,” Similar new report that Trader Joe’s are opening up a store in Florida. I do believe Trader Joe’s is a management benchment
Trader Joe’s has great workforce management practices and its employees enjoy what they do. They have cheerful attitudes and are more than willing to assist customers with anything in the store. Trader Joe’s employees are engaged in conversation with the customers that shop in the store and make the customers aware of any new or exciting products from them to try. The positive behavior of these employees is due to the compensation and benefits each employee receives, which is far more competitive than other grocery food stores. Trader Joe’s has also created an environment where employees feel valued and know their opinions matter to the growth of the
Trader Joe’s is in the broad market of grocery retailers, a market where the top 10 revenue-generating companies accounted for over $360 billion in sales in 2011. This market is saturated with supermarkets (Publix and Kroger), large discount retailers (Wal-Mart and Target), premium retailers (Whole Foods and Fresh Market), warehouse clubs (Costco and Sam’s Club), and “hard discount” retailers (Dollar General). With this large variation in grocer strategies, the market is heavily penetrated and competition is fierce. Supermarkets are continually losing market share in grocery sales (51 percent in 2011 as opposed to 66 percent in 2001) as players like Wal-Mart and Costco continue to generate more revenue. Although the supermarket share is decreasing, the overall grocery market is steadily increasing as the population of the United States increases. People always need to eat, so there will always be a
Trader Joe’s chief executives have been careful in their expanding of the brand to more geographic locations, and they must continue to seek out their target market of “intelligent, educated, inquisitive individuals” and settle around them.
Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are grocery retailers who have become very successful. Both these companies offer whole, natural, and quality products but operate to a wide extent particularly in terms of inventory management and supply chain organizations. Trader Joe’s has incredible inventory management and their supply chain focuses on private labels and extreme secrecy while Whole Foods has poor inventory management but their supply chain is quick, nimble and versatile. A huge competitive advantage that Whole food has is that they keep their shelves packed with about 25,00 to 45,000 products while Trader Joe’s keeps about 4,000 products. However, Trader Joes’ still made about $1,750 per square foot in 2009, more than double of what Whole
Founded in 1958 by Joe Coulombe and now established with more than 365 stores in the United States, Trader Joe 's has been serving customers with their unique business model. Trader Joe 's specializes in organic and natural food offering staples like milk, eggs, and other foods with below-average price points. Trader Joe’s encourage their customers to buy the product at a low price without having to be registered with the store. Once the company makes contacts with the manufacturer of the particular food product, it then establishes contracts with the producer to the supply the food and allocates the space needed in their store (Trader Joe’s, 2016).
Some main strengths of Trader Joe’s are the strong brand image, their employees, organic and private label products, customer loyalty, and offered unique products. Trader Joe’s strong brand image helps them to attract and retain more customers. Their private labels are named according to the background and nationality of food. They offered an extensive line of private label items with brand names such as Trader Joe’s, Trader Ming’s, Trader Jose, Trader Giotto. Due to their strong brand image, they established themselves as a leading retailer of food and non-food items in the US. Americans ranked Trader Joe’s overall as No. 1 retailer in 2013 (Ager & Roberto, 2014). Trader Joe's offered unique and high-quality products from different countries which attract customers to try new items and stocks of 4,000 items, 80% of which bear one of its own brand names. Trader Joe's describes itself as "your neighborhood grocery store" (Wikipedia, Trader Joe’s). Trader Joe’s claimed that 80% of its customers had attended college. The company described its target market as “intelligent, educated, inquisitive individuals” and they reach this customer by opening store among well-educated residents (Ager & Roberto, 2014). Their customers are too loyal towards their brand image so they keep coming back. Instead of targeting all customers, they need to target new customers in order to grow their business and to keep being a leader in the retail industry in the US. And also, their employee are valuable assets of the company, who led them towards the further growth of the company, therefore they are treated fairly and trained to provide the nice and friendly service to Trader Joe’s customers. Almost most of the people want to work at Trader Joe’s because they pay more than minimum wage and higher compare to other retail stores. New part-time hires earned $12 per hour and full-time employees earned approximately $50,000 per year which is above minimum wages. Plus, they contribute 15.4% of employee's salary towards retirement Saving. Furthermore, they offer good health and others benefits even to part-time employees (Ager & Roberto, 2014).
Dan Bane has been working with Trader Joe’s for over 20 years. In 1998 he become president of the company for three years, where he was then appointed CEO. Trader Joe’s originated as a small chain of grocery stores in 1967, and since then has expanded to over 465 stores nationwide across 41 states. Often referred to as the go-to neighborhood grocery store, Trader Joe’s has established its brand through continuous success under Dan Bane, generating a whopping 15.7 billion in revenue in 2016. Bane’s commitment to serving individual communities throughout the country is evident through the company’s donation of $341 million worth of organic food products to food banks last year. The company’s revenue has been growing at an average of 6.8 percent
Trader Joe stands by their mission statement as being a neighborhood store and a private label brand. The firm offers organic, locally sourced produce and ingredients, offering a wide variety of fresh items that are hard to find enabling the business to enjoy a distinctive competitive advantage. Additionally, through local sourcing Trader Joe’s continued involvement in local events through food donations, gift baskets and providing in store and online recipes and health guides. Apart from the many strengths of Trader Joe, the most significant is their commitment to quality at lower prices. Trader Joe has worked hard to manage the balance by sourcing directly from their suppliers. The firm states that “every penny we save is every penny our customer saves.” Similarly to WFM, their employees are its most valuable resource they possess, and as such they are treated fairly and trained to provide the first class service to Trader Joe’s customers. Each customer is given
Trader Joe 's is a privately owned grocery store that sells a variety of natural and healthy food and beverage options. Their headquarters is located in Monrovia, California and they have about 350 stores in roughly 25 states. It was started by Joe Coulombe as a Los Angeles convenience store chain in 1958, and then the company was bought in 1979 by German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht, who founded the ALDI food chain. Trader Joe’s competes within their niche market of organic and health food grocery stores with stores like Wild Oats and Whole Foods, as well as big grocery stores such as Hannaford, Roche Bros, and Market Basket. To keep costs down, its stores have no service departments and average about 10,000-15,000 sq. ft.
The company later grew bigger in size and popularity. Immediately after, to differentiate from the rest, it "started packaging innovative, hard-to-find, great-tasting foods under the “Trader Joe’s” name. In their website, they offer "quality ingredients, no artificial flavors, no artificial preservatives, the use of colors derived only from naturally available products, no MSG, no genetically modified ingredients, no partially hydrogenated oils (artificial trans-fats), no "marketing" costs, tasting panel approval and great prices"
Trader Joe’s is a chain of grocery stores first opened in 1967 in California, United States. Trader Joe's was founded by a man named Joe Coulombe and has been owned since 1979 by the Albrecht family, a German family who also owns the ALDI discounts food stores. Trader Joe’s has currently 367 stores within the United States with locations in over 20 states. Trader Joe's stores offer a wide, diverse and ever-changing range of organic products, 98% of them being food but also wine and exotic products. Some of their range of products includes essential groceries (bread, dairy and cereal), pastas, seafood and meatless foods,
Trader Joe’s success with their employee’s is based on hiring individuals who are “ambitious and adventurous, enjoy smiling and have a strong sense of values” (Uhl-Bien, Schermerhorn Jr., & Osborn, 2013, p. 98). Trader Joe’s employees’ exhibit job satisfaction and higher performance because they are compensated very well in their earnings, benefits and professional growth opportunities. Employees’ that are based in California stores “can earn almost 20 percent
What sets Trader Joe’s apart from these monster companies is the companies pursuit of value to every facet of its operations, it’s will to focus on natural products, the ways their employees connect with their customers and the willingness that the company has to cater to both employees and customers.
To begin ungirding the formidable strategic initiatives behind Trader Joe’s success, this writer believes it useful to point out what he believes to be the bedrock of the organization. This, is the seamless and firm internal and external alignment of the firm’s values, capabilities and opportunities. It is remarkable that a company which developed without a logo plastered across its products or single sign with the company name in its initial
There can be a number of reasons for a company to go public or private. There are benefits, as well as disadvantages that go along with either course of action (Exhibit 1 for details). When firms decide to go private, they are no longer listed on any stock exchange market. The pressure of keeping accounting regularity and reporting to the public is no longer an issue. Instead, firms can be more flexible to reorganize the business profile as well as the management team. In many cases, shareholders and board members receive very rewarding financial benefits from this transaction. However, in some situations, public firms do not have a choice in the matter, as is the case in a “hostile takeover”.