Harvey Norman Intangible Assets

The case study titled “Holt Lunsford Commercial” explains how Holt Lunsford is debating how to grow his Dallas-based commercial real estate services firm and how to advise a long-time client who is wondering whether to lease or buy an industrial warehouse. The case focuses on the highly competitive and increasingly institutionalized $50 billion real estate services industry, which encompasses property management, leasing, tenant representation, and other activities. What makes Lunsford's firm, The Holt Companies, special? The article explores what corporate strategy Lunsford should choose for his firm, and what recommendation he should make to his client.

Harvey Nichols boasts of a strong pricing power in the market. This aspect is essential in enabling the franchises compete effectively with best competitors in the market. Additionally, the franchise has a strong management, which gives an added advantage over most of rival franchise. Other strengths aspects that the franchise boosts of include, having an effective financial advantage over other franchises, an innovative culture that is strong, and a constant supply chain.

In the period up until the mid 1990's M&S had a market leading share of the clothing market. They used their resources and subsequent capabilities to exploit their differences from the competitors and create competitive advantage by:

Morrison’s is a food retailer which was established in 1899. Morrison’s started off as a stall at a local market in Bradford run by William Morrison and has since grown to be the UK’s fourth largest food retailer. Morrison’s aims to, “attract, motivate and develop people to ensure that Morrison’s becomes the ‘food specialist for everyone’”. In addition to Morrison’s being a supermarket it also offers a range of other services; cafés, recycling, dry cleaning, photo printer, petrol station and pharmacy. Morrison’s is highly customer orientated as they try to provide the best service to their customers by providing them with high quality and reasonably priced items.

The previous arrangement followed by Marks and Spencer demonstrates the concept of hierarchical structure, however in the last five years, due to a rise in their competitors within in the retail industry in the UK, their strategies have now become more focused on innovation and customer service’s quality. Therefore, their tall structure was redefined to adapt to these changes.

Lowe’s has entered into the Canadian and Australian market in attempts to gain unclaimed market shares. It has not gained enough traction in the Australian market but has done well in Canada. Lowe’s should focus more on expansion in Canada because of the strong need for Home Improvement stores. Lowe’s has the opportunity to gain more market share by developing a mobile application that allows users to view all items offered and what deals are taking place. Customer service is a top priority in any retail industry, Lowe’s needs to improve this dramatically. Lowe’s needs knowledgeable, friendly-staff that go beyond just showing a customer where a product is in the store. By doing so, Lowe’s will retain more customers and its competitors will lose shares of the market.

Harvey Norman holdings Ltd has its strength on the scale of retails, such as electrical products, furniture and so on. It has a very popular slogan saying that ‘Go Harvey, Go Harvey, Go Harvey Norman’, which makes a brand effect for the company. Besides, with the comparative advantage of its size, the HVN also has superiority of buying in bulk. It has relative lower cost for retail so that the price will be lower. Moreover, Harvey Norman follows the solid franchise model, which shows that approximately 35% of its revenue is generated from its franchise.

Harvey Norman’ Activity ratios are shown in Table __ and Fig __. The only year when Harvey Noman had its maximum inventory turnover was in the Financial year 2010. There was not much of a difference between the Financial Years 2010 and 2015 as the Average Collection Period, Accounts Receivable Ratio, Fixed Assets Turnover and Total Asset were fluctuating (it increased as well as decreased simultaneously). This increase in turnover is reflective of both a recent increase in consumer

‘We aim to return the UK High Street Retail business to its role as Britain's most popular stationer, bookseller and newsagent … Our plans encompass improved efficiency through cost savings and margin enhancement, while rebuilding the competitiveness and depth of our product ranges.' (Ms Swann BBC, July 2005)

Marks and Spencer (M&S) p.l.c. is one of the largest retailers in the United Kingdom with a selling space of 12.5 million square feet, was established in 1884 as ‘Penny bazaar’. M&S sells clothing, food, footwear, gifts and home furnishings in its 760 stores around the world. The company’s wholly own and franchise stores operates in Europe, Hong Kong, Far East, Australia, Middle East, the Bahamas and Bermuda making a total of 34 countries.

Argos is part of Home Retail Group and is one of the largest retailers in UK serving customers through hundreds of stores across the country. Argos major core competency for competitive advantage is a successful multi-channel retailing strategy with strong project management office. However, some of the major findings of the study

After closing date of report, the company announced 7 Clive Peters and Rick Hart may close and the rest of 18 stores will be changed into Harvey Norman format. The shutdown of 7 stores is to estimate to incur a charge around $10 million in the financial report of 2012.

When the first Woolworths supermarket open, the Founding CEO Percy Christmas has stated that a key principle for Woolworths were “Every man, woman and child needs a handy place where good things are cheap” which has been insisting by all the Woolworths employees and suppliers until now. Now Woolworths has more than 3,000 stores in Australia and New Zealand that span food, liquor, petrol and general merchandise. (Woolworths Limited, 2015).

Recently in Australia, online retail has appeared as a major threat to brick-and-mortar (physical) retailers, with online retail spending growing at a faster rate each year, and physical retail spending growing at a slower rate. According to the online retail sales index for the National Australia Bank (NAB), in December 2013, the online retail sales growth rate had expanded by 1.58% from November 2013, while domestic brick-and-mortar retailers retained their 0.6% growth rate from the previous month.

At the beginning of the 21st century, retailing has experienced a significant change due to the increase of competition strategies.