The Main Prospect Of Competition

Competition is prevalent in various aspects of life, including sports, school, and jobs. Everyone at some point in their lifetime will have to compete against others in order to achieve a goal or earn a prize. It’s how the world has worked for a long time; it’s survival of the fittest and this minor competition between everyone is how we have continuously gotten smarter, faster, and stronger. Competition is necessary to a certain degree, but how much is too much? It’s definitely not a bad thing, and as long as there’s a healthy amount, it can be beneficial because it fosters self-improvement, and it will push people to go all out and try their absolute best.

Product offerings by these contenders are similar as Tesco’s to a huge degree. This procedure helps Tesco to ensure its commercial center by expanding competition. A large portion of the contenders of the Tesco have an equivalent or a bigger market share in the store business. By industry investigators, Tesco PLC has a twenty nine per cent of shares the grocery store industry.

The UK supermarket industry is a very competitive and profitable industry. It is made up of four main players with significant share of the market, and then various smaller companies who focus on smaller niches in the market such as the bottom of the market discounters and the top of the line speciality stores. It is an interesting market and this report evaluates the attractiveness of the industry using Porter’s five forces model with an insight into how market nicher Waitrose sustains a competitive advantage. Next this report looks at how major player Sainsbury’s successfully competes against its rivals using differentiation strategies, and analyses current consumer trends and problems can effect this industry.

Tesco currently leads the UK’s other leading grocery retailers in terms of market share. This pattern is repeated online.

Larger stores also offer people the convenience of additional services along with their shopping, for example post office, pharmacy and opticians. By addressing consumer’s expectations and using their buyer power they can offer a choice of products to reflect consumer’s diverse budgetary, dietary, ethical and environmental requirements. Furthermore their global buyer power enables consumers to benefit from choosing exotic produce all year round. With 30,000,000 customers (Bevan cited in Allen, 2009) choosing to use the big four supermarkets on a weekly basis it would suggest that they provide a format that consumers want.

Opportunities for Ocado are mostly related to the trends in modern society and economy. People in the UK are working long hours and need services that help them manage their time. Being able to order groceries for delivery at late hours of the day is one of the more important opportunities for Ocado. It is important to note that Ocado is the grocery delivering service that offers delivery slots as late as 11 30 pm. Other opportunities lay in the fact that the company is an established player and that it is recognized as having the best customer experience and service among online grocery retailers. Thus

In order to stay ahead of competition Ocado should also revamp its online presence. Ocado's website is fairly good, with clean and easy to navigate interfaces. It has to be noted, however, that other players in the UK's online grocery markets are not far behind with their design of websites and overall user experience. While Ocado's website is very good in some aspects and has no significant

On line retail grocery market in the UK is a highly competitive environment and there are many players active in it. Those players hail from both the traditional side of the business, who expanded into on line segment as well as organizations created specifically as an on line grocery retailer. That is the case of the Ocado company.

According to Turban and King (2003), internet technology renders retailers an additional channel for branding, transactions and customer relationship management, the adaptation of which may drive down retailers’ transaction costs, and ensuring faster and higher quality of customer interactions, resulting in enlarging the existing markets and consumer base. M&S realizes this and have tried to sell clothing via high street stores as well as via internet though they have experienced cost cutting, rationalisation and management changes in order to revive their business in recent years. Internet technology might enable sustainable competitive advantage, but problems remain on how to physically organize their online retail operations.

In this report, the writer will explain the background of Tesco, purpose, benefit, the shortcomings and the impact on its business by using e-business strategy, as well as the developments in the strategies and business models of online supermarket retailing.

1. As a customer, what do you want from an online grocery store? How does consumers’ behaviour differ when shopping for groceries on-line vs. off-line? What are the implications of these differences on the operations of an on-line vs. off-line store?

The UK supermarket industry resembles an oligopolistic industry, with several characteristics. Oligopolistic markets tend to be characterised by high concentration ratios, barriers to entry and…Since the turn of the century, the industry has been scrutinised by both the Office of Fair Trading and has been referred to the Competition Commission on two occasions. (Seely, 2012)

2.0 PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL FOR UK SUPERMARKET INDUSTRY Supermarkets’ performance is reliant on consumer’s income and their willingness to spend. The growing consumer pressure to drive value, quality and taste requires companies with strong management teams to understand the market trends in the industry of which this had led to constant competition among firms in the industry. This rivalry is based on firms in the industry battling to win the highest market share in

* External Context of Sainsbury’s belongs to the biggest supermarket leaders in UK. In other words, Sainsbury’s is part of big four ‘Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s. The biggest rival today in UK market is Morrison’s, they booth fighting for a market but Sainsbury’s ram in a higher place. In Appendix 3, we can find concept of retail and types of functioning.

Supermarket e-commerce stores that have altered business practice grow very fast. The popularity of online supermarket increases every year. Keynote’s study (as cited in Hand, Riley, Harris, Singh, and Rettie, 2009, p. 1205) explain that in 2006, the percentage of online supermarkets are higher approximately 35% than previous year. It could be that customers will shop online only in the future if the popularity of traditional stores go down. In addition, many supermarkets such as Walmart, Coles, and Giant are starting to build e-commerce. Online supermarket grow