Case Study : Dollar Tree Logistics

the superior tracking capability of RFID chips would reduce shrinkage and other forms of loss by up

Costco performs a number of tasks in each primary value chain activity. For inbound logistics Costco performs tasks relating to quality control, receiving shipments of products, controlling raw materials, and schedule supply shipments. An example is Costco choosing what products to receive and sell to their customers. Costco wants to sell quality goods, so it is inbound logistics jobs to choose what products to sell. They also help schedule when Costco stores should receive more shipments of products, and watching over the raw materials that go into the business.

The one quality that puts Dollar Tree ahead of all other dollar stores is that it actually sells all of its products at one dollar. It does not matter what the product usually sells for or what it should sell for, because Dollar Tree’s business works in a way that makes them capable to sell their products at the simple price of one dollar. Because of this unique aspect, we will focus a large portion of our advertising on that message. Consumers can do all of their shopping at one low price, and in return, receive quality products which satisfy their needs. Our advertising will give off the personality of the average working family. Dollar Tree is not a fancy store and that is certainly not the image that our advertising will convey. We want people to be able to relate to Dollar Tree and have the feeling that shopping at our stores is like shopping at a Walmart or Cosco, but cheaper and less of a hassle.  It’s the one stop shop for all of your family needs.

If we analyze Dollar Store, we will see that it has established over 140 stores across Canada since its inception in 1998. As it has been considerably increasing its market reach across Canada; they are considered a direct competitor to Dollarama. On the other hand, Great Canadian Dollar stores are extending their reach in eastern Canada. Additionally, they are very present in the community by offering both charitable and communal support. At last, Dollar Tree is a growing chain of discounted retail stores in the United States. It operates over 4400 retail stores in 48 states of the US and in Canada. Thus, they are ready to expand their customer base into Canada. Also, Dollar Tree offers a much broader range of products compared to Dollarama, for example frozen foods and dairy items. As such, there is a very high competition in the discounted retail stores industry. However, in such a high competitive environment, Dollarama is still able to open over 150 stores in the past four years only. Also, considering their stock trend, their share price had increased from 25$ to 56.90$ per share in only one year. That represents a growth of 128% in a single year. We can conclude that their shares are in demand in our current market environment. Thus, we can assess that they are very well positioned in today’s competitive environment.

Dollar Tree where everything is a dollar! There are a lot of dollar stores out their but none of them compare to Dollar Tree. While the Dollar Tree does have some competitors there are very few. Competitors include little hometown dollar stores, Dollar General, Family Dollar and 99 Cents Only Stores. Everything in Dollar Tree is priced at or below $1. The store was founded in 1986. There are over 5,100 Dollar Tree stores in the United States and in the District of Columbia and approximately 180 in Canada (History of Dollar Tree, Inc.). Most Dollar Trees are located in busy plazas and malls, because of the heavy flow of trafic (History of Dollar Tree, Inc.).

The Dollar Tree brand of stores has been around since 1986, when Douglas Perry, Macon Brock, and Ray Compton founded the chain as a compliment to their other business, K & K Toys (Parnell, 2014). Through the years, Dollar Tree has acquired several different dollar store and low-end retail chains to grow their business to over 4000 stores (Shetty, 2010). One of the first and most strategic moves that the company made was to shift away from carrying closeout merchandise and to become more of a traditional variety store with a wide variety of basic goods all priced at a dollar or less. To accomplish this change, the chain had to discontinue their current purchasing strategies and had to begin buying directly from manufacturers to change the type of merchandise that they had available for consumers. The second major strategic move involved changing the location of where stores are usually located. Up until this point, the stores had been being in enclosed malls. With this change,

Dollar  Tree  Logis-cs  and   Distribu-on  Center  Decision   Dollar   Tree   •  Main  merchandises:   –  $1     –  Consumable  merchandise:  candy,  food,  health  and   beauty  care,  house  wares  (paper,  plas-cs,  chemicals)   –  Variety  merchandise:  toys,  durable  house  wares,   giCs,  party  goods,  gree-ng  cards   –  Seasonal  goods:  Easter  baskets,  summer  toys,  lawn   and  garden  equipments,  Halloween  and  Christmas   goods   40%  imports,  7%  closeout  items,  rest  domes-c  vendors   Dollar  Tree—Opera-ons  Competency   •  What  are  the  opera-onal  priori-es?   • 

Walmart has a large retail seafood business and it is always a challenge to reduce cost and promote sustainability. With upward trend for the demand of sea-food, depletion of the seafood supply is inevitable unless Walmart have a deep engagement of their supply chain. One strategy that Walmart wants to promote to their suppliers is for all of them to take up the Marine Stewardship Council’s certification program. This process will be time consuming, expensive and complex. The depletion of some fish poses a threat to Walmart and its seafood supply chain.

1. Wal-Mart has been able to achieve respectable leadership in the retail industry because of its focus on supply chain management. Discuss in detail the distribution and logistics system adopted by Wal-Mart.

Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) were introduced in 1980 with the purpose of saving energy. They initially were very expensive and consumers were aware of many flaws that made them hesitant to purchase the bulbs and bring them into their homes. The positive effects of switching from alternative bulbs to CFLs were overshadowed by media attention highlighting the issues that remained unresolved. Wal-Mart pushed promotional programs in 2007 that were very successful. They introduced a private label at a lower price, offered online ordering, posititioned the products well, installed interactive displays and engaged with new partners to promote energy efficiency. In 2009 the CFLs were redesigned and

Ragan Fretwell - Case 23: Walmart: But We Do Give Them a 10% Employee Discount

A. Wal-Mart realized through third party studies and internal research that the Chinese customer were significantly more cost-sensitive than those in other countries and that there existed a strong, established culture of frequently shopping around to find the absolute lowest prices. Through these studies, Wal-Mart also realized that customer satisfaction level greatly influenced customer loyalty in China. The greatest determinant of this satisfaction was made up of perceived value. The perceived value is composed of three sub factors: (1) Product price, (2) Relative price and (3) Promotion. The other factors for customer satisfaction in descending order of its importance are Image,

Wal-Mart is a company which operates in the service sector, more specifically in the “Discount, Variety Stores/Retail” industry. The company’s superior performance is demonstrated through the fact that it was America’s largest company (in terms of revenue) in 2002, and the reputation of the company is reflected in the opinion of “Fortune” who have identified Wal-Mart as one of the world’s most admired companies. In 2004 Wal-Mart had been hiring 1.4 million employees – making it the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart’s share prices have also been stable at time of stock market volatility. There are

Soon afterwards, UPS disbursed packages nationwide and began to increase their international services (Rodrigue, n.d.).

We would like to show our gratitude to Resp. Prof. Mr. Sham Sharma, for providing us with the golden opportunity to prepare an intellectual report, on Distribution & Logistics Management of “wal-mart”.