The Swot Analysis Of Waitrose

Introduction: WAITROSE Ltd was found in 1904 by Wallace Wyndham Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor when they opened their shop in Acton (Andidas, 2003). In 1937, it was acquired by the John Lewis Partnership and its Self Service was introduced in 1951. From a small business selling grocery products, it has been built up to a network of over 300 shops known for its own historical and the quality of products. The majority of their customers are those who have stable incomes and above due to their uncompetitive price. Their key aims and objectives are to archive improvement in services and gain more profits by open new store and expand their business into the North-West. In addition, Waitrose also wants to archive more targets in the next period of time such as to motivate their staff to provide better services, which can increase levels of customer service, and develop their organic range as well as their relationships with local community In this project. In this essay, the dominant stakeholders and their main interest will be identified as well as the discussion of Waitrose 's detailed analysis.

Executive Summary The objective of this report is to analyse the UK supermarkets industry for John Lewis in order to seek their competitive advantage in the market. This report is to be presented to the Board of Directors of John Lewis Partnership.

UK Although Waitrose occupies a niche market, barriers for entry are still reasonably high as it has a very well established brand image of high quality products and is the market leader for organic produce.

But the social factor is affecting on the supermarket and because of its customers. People who shop in Waitrose are people middle age or older. It is fact that the population in UK is ageing and `this trend is projected to continue`. The increase in the number of old people is increase in the number of the Waitrose`s customers. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=949 accessed 21/03/2011

1.Introduction This report is about the UK supermarket industry, and analysing the condition of the current market. It will focus on its market structure, barriers to entry and contestable market to analyse if the supermarket industry is an oligopoly market and if it is a contestable market or not.

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.

Every retail location carries a variety of products that distinguishes it from other stores in the same chain. Not surprisingly, it is difficult to achieve economies of scale. Supply Chain Mackey describes his consumers as being “part of a cult”. Whole Foods believes that the company’s emphasis on perishables and locally-sourced produce differentiates their stores from run-of-the-mill supermarkets and attracts loyal and devoted customers. However, “fresh produce” is one of the most challenging product categories to operate due to limited product shelf life and high cost of spoilage. Whole Foods has tried to circumvent most of the problems inherent in supplying fresh produce to its stores by sourcing locally and having short and flexible supply chains. In the case of fruits and vegetables, Whole Foods has buying relationships with local farmers who supply the store with seasonal produce. Thus, if one farmer is unable to produce a sufficient amount of yellow corn or heirloom tomatoes, the shortfall can be made up by another farmer. Although challenging to perfect, these short supply chains are agile and difficult for other big retailers to duplicate.

According to (Parkin, Powell and Matthews, 2014) Economic Growth is defined as a sustained expansion of production possibilities measured as the increase in real GDP over a period of time. Achieving economic growth depends on the government fulling one of its macroeconomic objectives between them is stable economic growth, low level of inflation, low level unemployment, and adequate level of balance of payments. UK’s economic growth fluctuates significantly year to year as mentioned by (Fyfe and Threadgould, 2013, p.1) “The trend rate of economic growth of the UK economy has been assumed for several years to be between 2.5% and 2.75% per year”. The fluctuations can be seen in Figure 1 shows detail changes in economic growth. The “Credit Crunch”, from mid-2007 to 2009 UK’s growth fell from 2.7% to -2.3% resulting in a recession. However, UK has been

The aim of this essay is to explore who the winners and losers are in a consumer society by looking at how status is affected by choices as a consequence of economic position. The essay also examines how major stakeholders, such as supermarkets and suppliers, impact that judgement and the

2. Most firms in the supermarket industry operate as retail outlets, comprising of supermarkets and discount stores. Most of these supermarkets operate on very little profit margins, and mostly get their ideas from their customers for their product developments. Supermarkets generate revenue by being determined to meet the needs of their customers’ lifestyle. By so doing they end up creating value for their products and making profits at the same time. Through bulk purchases, they also achieve their economies of scale at cheaper prices and then end up selling at cheaper prices to their customers.

. ABSTRACT 2. INTRODUCTION 3. ORGANIZATION BRIEF 4. CHALLENGES 4.1 Data Standardization In the retail market, data record inaccuracies forms one of the most important causes of out-of stock situation. This leads to decrease in revenue for the retailers. Again, the organizations have to bear significant labor costs due to the manual system of data transfer regarding product information. This leads to indirect effects on poor data quality on the supply and demand chain (Legner & Schemm 2008, p.21). Coles Supermarkets have been using barcoding since early nineties. One of the challenges they have been facing was with the manual entries and increased labor costs if a barcode fails to scan. Secondly, barcodes lacked real-time product tracking and this is extremely important for them, as the supply chain is vast in terms of the intermediaries and the locations from which the goods are supplied and delivered. Coles have suppliers within Australia as well as from countries like India, China and Bangladesh. Due to this, they were lacking best practice opportunities of factory gate pricing and reverse logistics (Coles Centenary 2015)

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)

EXTERNAL CONTEXT There are 92,796 grocery stores in the UK and the market value increase by 19.5% in the last 5 years and according to IGD forecast the UK grocery market should reach £203bn by 2019. But what we can see in the figure 1 that from 2009 to 2014 annual grow in the grocery market start decreasing from 4.9% in 2009 to 2.8% in 2014. One of the reason for this is difficult economic conditions which had an effect for consumer spending. Consumers choose to spend less money on food by buying less food or by looking for cheaper places. Retail market is diversified into three main sectors: Hypermarket and superstores which accounts for 42.3% of retail market, convenience stores 21.4% and small supermarkets 20.3% (Figure 3). So about 84% of sales are done in these three sectors. The biggest 4 retail chains in UK are: Tesco which takes 28.7% market share, Asda has 17.3%, Sainsbury’s 16.6% and Morrison’s 11%. (Figure 2) So, if we will sum up 4 biggest retail market chains we will have about ¾ of market share. Finally, a strong characteristic of this sector is competition with price wars and a

It was a key decision to feature partners in the campaign, which uses them as a point of difference, distinguishing us from our rivals (www.guardian.co.uk ). The targeted customers of their products are richer class. The most important reason that they have loyal customers is because of the quality they provide. The customers of Waitrose believe in the company, such that even if they get the same goods cheaper in other stores (Tesco, Azda) they will still stick to Waitrose. In the product line the fruits and vegetables they put on the market are priced at a premium. “For anyone who enjoys food and can afford to pay a bit extra, it is easy to understand why the chain has built a following”. (www.guardian.co.uk )

INDUSTRY Overview of the market: size of the market, brand leaders, Competitive set, changes in the market place, trends in consumer behavior Influencing the market, opportunities, challenges, strengths, weaknesses The grocery retail industry worldwide has grown in recent years to become one of the most intensely competitive industries due to the continuous amounts of new entrants. A grocery retailer is one that sells food and other general household items. Hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounters and small grocery retailers are all under the grocery retail umbrella. Between 2003 and 2008, the grocery retailing industry accounted for 45% of store-based retail values sales over the world. The figures