The Development Of Retail Chains

The world of retail has entered a period of enormous transformation, with broader retail market growth at a pace of three percent annually, many retailers are finding themselves in an uphill battle to profitably expand growth and market share (Deloitte, 2017). According to Richard Goyder AO, Managing Director, Wesfarmers “The key to long-term corporate success is evolution – looking for new ways to do business, for new businesses and new geographies to operate in (Wesfarmers, 2015).

The threat of entry of the supermarket industry in US is low, which base on the analysis of the three major sources that related to the entry barriers. The first barrier is the economies of scale of the existing large supermarkets. When these incumbents achieved larger volume sales, they can have lower unit costs than new entrants, and it will very difficult for those new entrants to compete with them (Johnson, Whittington, &Scholes 2011). For example, Wal-Mart had invested in innovative procurement, automated distribution centre and bar coding to increase its economies of scale, and these investments created a great barriers for new small retailers to enter into the supermarket industry (Porter 2008). The second barrier is the incumbency advantages, which mean the incumbents established their own strengths that cannot be used by competitors (Porter 2008). For example, the top ten supermarkets in US have accumulated extensive experiences on how to run their businesses more efficiently than new entrants (Johnson, Whittington, &Scholes 2011). The subtle differentiation between the products that sold in supermarkets is the third barrier for new entrants. Because most of the product assortment is same or similar between each supermarket,

First, I believe that Postrel’s argument for chain stores, would be that it offers more job oppurtunties.

In this assignment I am going to evaluate the distribution systems in delivering goods and services for one of the well-known food sector business and that is ASDA. I am going to look at both the positive and the negative aspects of the distribution systems used and make recommendations for improvement with justified reasons

Stages of business growth theories see the development of an organization as a process with several stages and try to understand the features of different stages and the accompanying problems. All the models try to solve the following three big questions: How to mark the stages of business growth? How many stages the business experiences in its development? What are

In the last part of the book, the author talks about small retailers and co-operators and their views regarding the monopolized retailers. This part also talks about the mass retailing business from a broader perspective. It turns out that the government did not want to intervene in the retail business and they were only able to bring in a tax reform for these big businesses. Even today, mass retailers still dominate the consumer landscape.

The economic success of retailers greatly depends on their ability to reach customers and meet customer demands in ways that is convenient for the customer. No longer can retailers expect customers to only shop at their retail stores. Retailers are required to provide customers with the multiple shopping channels and flexible fulfillment options that they demand. Companies who fail to do so will see their customers take their business to competitors who are both willing and able to serve customers based on consumer demand (xxx)

11. How did companies and stores expand? Which industries suffered at the expense of expanding retailers?

Four elements must exist to prove there is a valid contract between the chain store and Sam Stevens. These four elements include the agreement, consideration, contractual capacity and legal object. The first element of the agreement would be deemed to exist if one person makes an offer and the other party accepts that offer. In this case, Sam did verbally agreed to send the 1,000 units to the chain store; that element does count toward a contract. The second element of the consideration would be deemed to exist if each party gets something in exchange for their promise under a contract. If Sam and the chain store agreed to what he would get in return for his 1,000 units, this element would be valid. However, this was not mentioned by either side, so the contract would not be valid.

This assignment will be discussing about when I was working as a logistics manager for Morrisons and we will be talking about how Morrisons distribution system works and evaluating the system. Morrisons' market share as of August 2013 was 11.3%, making it the smallest of the "Big Four" supermarkets, behind Tesco (30.1%), Sainsbury's (16.6%) and Asda (16.4%), but ahead of the fifth place Co-operative Group, which had a share of 4.4% - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrisons. There is currently 569 stores across the UK and this means that the distribution system must be effective and be able to deliver goods to the Morrisons stores in time.

In the 1950s and 1960s shops selling high-order goods, like furniture and jewellery, were in the town and city centres, which attracted customers from a wide catchment area. Shops selling low-order goods, like food, were located in the local neighbourhoods. However, this traditional shopping pattern began to change in the 1970s, when shops like supermarkets and DIY stores began to move to the outskirts of towns by decentralisation. Although it is obvious that the decentralisation of retailing and other services has had a major impact on urban areas, the impacts have been negative, positive or neutral.

First of all, Chain stores give consumers an array an options. Postrel mentions in her essay, “Chain stores do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs

The global supply chain in the retail industry has witnessed changes and shifts which have led to opportunities and challenges for the involved players. This has occasioned shifts in trade and consumer behavior patterns. Among these are global growth patterns brought about by explosion of more cities and thus growth in infrastructure. There have been flexible supply chain trends which have enabled retail operators to adapt effectively to unexpected circumstances and changes. Moreover, globalization has changed the way retail supply chain is managed as more mature markets emerge to provide logistic and standard solution needs of the businesses. Conversely, near-shoring has

Inditex ensures that its fashion is fast through its supply chain efforts. They have created new methods to enable store managers to order and display merchandise faster and added cargo routes for shipping goods. The company ships clothing straight from the factory to stores and makes two-thirds of its goods in Spain and nearby countries, compared to most competitors who manufacture most of their clothing in Asia. Inditex has their sales managers monitoring computers, which are reporting sales at every store around the world. When a garment does well or fails, they are able to quickly tell designers if they need to come up with new ideas. They also have generated

Corporatization is synonymous with the concept of industrialization. When one thinks of an ‘industrial’ park, the picture of a sprawling landscape of large businesses comes to mind. The image of a community of self-sustaining mom-and-pop shops certainly doesn’t fit the bill of what is commonly thought of to be industrial. We more commonly think of large corporations like Monsanto and Walmart as symbols of the adjective. In the case of the food industry, the advent of larger grocers, larger agricultural labor contractors, and more advanced food distribution systems presents a large amount of evidence to suggest that the food industry has become more corporate and industrial. McMillan provides a solid background of the history of grocers in the United States. She specifically points out King Kullen as an early innovator in the industry, stating of the time before King Kullen, “Most women would go to the A&P for dry and canned goods, handing their shopping list to a clerk who would portion out everything from bulk bins and shelves, and hand back the goods over a counter” (McMillan, 106). With this business model, it’s very difficult to grow a very large business. This model is extremely labor intensive, as a clerk had to obtain each item for a customer themselves, making it so that a grocer could only serve a limited number of customers in one day. In the days before King Kullen, this greatly restricted the size that a grocer could grow to. McMillan also points to agricultural