Costco Business Strategy

The strategic objective of Costco is based on the concept of offering members very low prices on a limited selection of nationally branded and selected private label products in a wide range of merchandise categories while producing high sales volumes and rapid inventory turnover. This rapid inventory turnover, when combined with the operating efficiencies achieved by volume purchasing, efficient distribution and reduced handling of merchandise in no-frills, self service warehouse facilities, enables Costco to operate profitably at significantly lower gross margins than traditional wholesalers, discount retailers and supermarkets. (1)

Costco Wholesale Corporation’s organizational structure is based on the company’s current operation and locations as well as the market. The organization structure is the shape to connect different organizational components to address the business needs. Costco’s organizational structure active enables the management of operations in different markets. Even though Costco is the biggest membership warehouse club in America, and designed it structure for success in the management of it business in the U.S. and overseas. Costco would have to change its organizational structure within time to suit the expanding global operations.

Costco has a simple strategy for being one of the leaders in the wholesales, which is concentrating on driving sales. If the sales of a company are good than everything else will take care of itself. While other companies such as Wal-Mart, Target and BJ’s pour money into marketing; Costco has a no-frills approach and doesn’t advertise. Costco focuses on selling fewer items which increases sale volume and

Costco’s business model is interesting because they are proficient enough to persistently promote to a niche market. By propounding the finest products feasible at

Costco’s business model is focused on producing high sales volumes and rapid inventory turnover by offering members low prices on a limited selection of national name brands and select private-label products in a wide range variety. Costco is focused in low-cost strategy is concentrated on a narrow buy segment and out competing rivals by having lower costs, therefore being able serve a niche consumers at a lower price. (Gamble, John and Thompson, Arthur (2009)

Costco does not have distributors or retailers to supply its products to the end users. They do, however, have reseller who buy their products for their business and sell to the end user. For example, Costco’s business membership offers tax-exempt purchases to restaurant and small grocery store owners; they then sell those purchased goods to the end user.

Cole is an Australian supermarket with large influence and market share in the country. In addition, the company contributes significantly to the nation’s economy. In essence, the company has acquired more than 30% of the market share of the supermarket industry in this nation. Specifically, the company’sproduct line consists of daily products, grocery, meat, deli, fresh produce, bake house, cigarettes, liquor, apparel, general merchandize and over head products. Notably Cole has a culture of low price as its marketing strategy of attracting and retaining customers.

Due to the market; bargains were more important to consumers. Fifty-six of Costco warehouses exceeded $200 million in sales in fiscal 2010, and two of these units each did more than $300 million. This rate of revenue is highly attributable to the strong entrepreneurial culture that encourages its employees and management’s teams to be creative and contribute new ideas to allow the company to constantly evolve and improve. It has been well publicized that Costco rewards and compensates its employees well. It is a well oiled machine that reciprocates its success with its customers and employees.

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Costco is among the leading global retailers which provide customers a wide range of merchandise, ranging from small to well-known brands. The company began operations in 1983. Over the years, Costco has been a retailer in low cost membership-only leader, in warehouse club of merchandise. Moreover, Costco does not offer frills warehouse business models as its competitors do.  Costco’s major competitors are BJ’s Wholesale Club and Sam Club (Costco, 2010).

According to Deloitte’s 2014 Global Powers of Retailing Report, it identifies the 250 largest retailers around the world based on publicly available data for fiscal 2012 encompassing companies’ fiscal years ended through to June 2013; however, here mainly focuses on the Top 10 retailers’ analysis.

Costco has grown from a single location in Seattle, Washington and is now the largest membership based retailer and currently the 6th largest overall retailer in the United States. In 2011, Costco saw a 10% increase in sales and in 2012, Costco is planning on opening 14 new store locations, three of which will be outside of the US. Costco is no longer a small local retailer but now an international company with different threats and opportunities. As the company continues to grow, it is important for Costco to understand the external threats and opportunities that will impact the company in either a positive or negative way. In order understand these forces a SLEPT analysis is used to analyze the social, legal, economical,

What is Costco’s business model? Is the company’s business model appealing? Why or why not?

The Costco strategy for getting into the wedding gown business is to have a set of touring trunk shows at its Western stores during the season where people are planning their weddings. Costco's typical pricing strategy is to undercut competition and make up for this with high volume sales. The company applies this strategy to the wedding gown business as well. Costco offers one of the lowest prices of any company on its wedding dresses. The company's business plan ensures that the details have been fleshed out, and that has led to the unique distribution strategy for wedding gowns.

Over the past ten years, Walmart has been losing retail market share and their customers to competitors that can offer more reasonable prices at greater convenience for their customers. Walmart is losing money to Amazon and other online shoppings sites (D’Onfro). These competitors can offer the same or better price for a better quality item. Amazon can guarantee free, two day shipping if the package meets their requirements (Order with Free Shipping). To collect real data for the inspiration for our idea we sent out a survey to every teacher and many students in the district. Me and Cole had a total of 122 respondents, a majority of them were between the ages of forty one to fifty and were female. In one of the survey’s questions, several respondents wrote that they regarded Costco as a more superior and desirable retailer for a more potential shopping option. Respondent sixteen replied that the changes that must be made to Walmart for them to regularly shop there were “A higher quality in their goods while keeping the low prices, obviously that will be a hard thing to do but Costco manages to do it. In a sum up be more like your rival Costco. The marketing strategy of costco is simple, sell goods in bulk for the lowest possible prices. This can be a strong competitive edge for these retailer because their customers feel they are saving money and time, by buying more than what they need in a given amount of time. Changing the angle of the target customers can completely