Dollar General Essay

(3) In an effort to replace foreign- sourced goods sold at Wal-Mart stores with American-made ones, Wal-Mart developed its “Buy American” program. By 1989, the company estimated it had converted or retained over $1.7 billion in retail purchases that would have been placed or produced offshore, and created or retained over 41,000 jobs for the American work force.

Improving the store internally with more resourceful employees, better lighting and displays, and more organized floor plans will start to change the image of Dollar General that the average public holds. A more respectable store will lead to an increase in customers. Dollar General will then begin developing a system of a more sustainable competitive advantage among the small and large firms of the similar industry.

Costco Wholesale Corporation operates an international chain of membership warehouses, which carries quality, brand name

Exploitability- Since Grocery Checkout is the only online grocery destination in London, they can exploit the full potential of their resources. Grocery Checkout’s

That being said, suppliers can have some power in regards to choosing the number of stores where their product can be purchased at. This allows the suppliers to regulate their sales and stay away from the “red tape”. The bargaining power of customers impacts HBC as customers are able to influence pricing based on their buying habits. Of course, customers do not choose the retail prices offered to them, however, if inexpensive clothing were to lead the industry, retail stores would adapt to this consumer demand and offer an abundance of inexpensive clothing due to consumer preferences. These forces lead to rivalry among competitors due to the many options offered to consumers to grant their desires. These forces combine to cause strategic implications for HBC. HBC must differentiate itself from its competitors who, similar to HBC, have large annual revenue, strong and profitable supplier agreements and large amounts of capital. As well, due to competitors large sale volumes, competitive pricing is an implication which faces

Bargaining Power of Buyers: The bargaining power of buyers is high in the department store retail industry. The volume of buyers is high, and buyers are very price sensitive in this industry. The products are not highly differentiated, and there are numerous stores that offer the same, or similar, products, giving buyers the opportunity to search for the lowest prices and information. The industry has substitutes available in the form of specialty, differentiated products and stores. This increases the power of buyers,

The internal analysis is very important in a company. Just like the external analysis, both of these analysis help to determine strategies. The Internal analysis involves the strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats of a company (Pearson, 2014). Dollar Tree has many strengths but they also have some weakness too. If Dollar Tree would use the data that they have from their internal analysis they could turn a lot of their weakness into strengths. But we will talk about their weaknesses later. The more strength a company has the better. One of Dollar Tree’s strengths would be that they acquired Family Dollar in 2015. This is a huge strength for Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree has many opportunities to overtake the dollar store market. They only need to keep inquiring their competitor’s stores. Strength for Dollar Tree is their strong financial performance. They are the largest dollar store in the market. Dollar Tree has a $15.5B Annual net sale that grew to 80.2% in 2015 and exceeded $15 billion for the first time in Company history. Now to Dollar Tree’s weaknesses, this would be their low inventory turnover ratio. In 2016, Dollar Tree reported that their inventory turnover ratio was 3.8 (Canadean, 2016). This is a high number. This is saying that they have more than enough of inventory in store that is not being bought by their customers. This is really money that is setting in their warehouse or stockroom and it just sitting and is not being used. This is bad for Dollar Tree.

Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last

Evidently, Wal-Mart is not doing anything to differentiate itself from rivals. It gives no frills to self-service outlets always providing the cheapest prices. Through a well-built influence with suppliers, the company has gained the power to manipulate prices and amend manufacturing procedures thus wringing out more savings for its customers. All that the company does from the frequent calls to suppliers to doubling up execs in hotel rooms aimed at saving the

 Illustrates low prices and at the same time, not portray a cheap image to consumer.

1. How well do you think Wal-Mart’s earlier, more limited health benefits supported the company’s overall business strategy?

Over the last several years Dollar General has seen great success with the strategies currently in place. With potential changes in the economy and some situations presently in the company Dollar General must plan for the future. This memo was put together to identify our strengths and weakness, analysis the external factors of the company, and find options for the future. The options of where to invest our time and effort are; Geographic expansion within the U.S, Improve Merchandising Productivity, and Expand into Services. The recommendation chosen for the Dollar General was to pull back slightly on the current plan of expanding through building

Stores like Wal-Mart are famous for keeping their prices so low. This is one reason why they are able to maintain a grip on the consumers of an area. They accomplish this by keeping the cost to produce and transport the goods low. In January, a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. found that, “an individual family could save $589 a year on groceries by shopping at a supercenter. Overall, shoppers could save $3.76 billion in merchandise nationwide.” (Blazier, A, 2004) A major reason they can keep prices lower than mom-and-pop run businesses is their ability to buy merchandise in bulk. Buying in bulk works the same way it does for a consumer. The more of a product that is purchased, the less the cost is per unit. Consumers see this every day when they go to stores like Sam’s Club or Costco. When they buy their merchandise in bulk, they are able to offer it to the consumer at a lower price. (Kale, 2011) This is what could eventually drive the mom-and-pop owned businesses out of the area, and draw a negative criticism from the public. The interesting thing about this criticism is that the public complains about Wal-Mart

The economies of scale in the retail industry are huge. All of the companies in this industry have first mover advantage. Many of the competitors in this industry already have immense and diverse relationships with many of the suppliers they obtain and any new competitor will have a tough time trying to squeeze into the dealer network in order to establish themselves as any type of threat to another retailer.

The power of buyer is moderately high because the access to the internet allows customers to have close to full information on prices charged by the LCCs.