What Are The Core Competencies For Big-Box Retails?

(P1.1) In formulating a business strategy, it is a crucial factor to determine what the organization’s mission, vision, objectives and core competencies are because it sets an idea on what the organization should do and what purpose do they have in the industry to contribute to their customers. It also helps what markets should they target and what action should they plan to have a competitive advantage.

With Kroger ranging from a variety of goods, it gives Kroger a wide diversity of strengths for the external environment. Some of the strengths are the fact that Kroger has an online market. Customers can order jewelry, deli and bakery products, floral, and more with the click of a button. This puts them higher up on the competition list for the advanced technology and convenience provided to gain loyal customers. Another strength is that Kroger has stores spanning across thirty five states, which is more than half the nation. This gives the company a wide geographical range in order to compete with surrounding stores. A threat into the external environment would be the competition between supermarkets. The trick is to offer something that large corporations cannot compete with. Kroger is known for its organic line of groceries, called Simple Truth, and its naturally fresh foods and produce. While companies such as Walmart or Costco can offer fresh foods, they are not as focused on the pure organic part. They are more about selling in bulk, and offering discounts, low prices, packaging, and quality. Kroger, on the other hand, can focus more on promoting their organic brands of groceries to attract customers. The natural and organic brand of Simple Truth can factor in Kroger’s opportunities, as Simple Truth is growing, now with over 15,000 organic food items. This allows Kroger to provide a huge variety of food and healthy choices to its customers.

Publix Supermarket, Inc. is a private enterprise currently limited to the southeastern part, of the United States. It was founded 88 years ago by George W. Jenkins, who opened the first store location in Lakeland, FL; where the headquarters is located. Mr. Jenkins sets out with the mission for the company to make it the "premier quality food leader in the world" (Publix, 2017). He knew from early beginnings that this could only be accomplished by offering exclusive services and exclusive premier customer service. Thus, he began to offer this service by becoming the first store manager, who offer to take his customer's groceries to their car while having a polite conversion with them. He also encouraged his associates to follow his example.

Would you like it if your neighborhood slowly fell into ruin? Walmart and other big box stores destroy neighborhoods and should be banned. First of all, big box stores are bad for local business owners. Specialty stores lose customers, because of the convenience and a wide selection of products, people tend to shop there instead. For example, many butcher shops shut down, because Walmart has its own meat Section. In addition, having a big box store built in your area can change your daily life. They bring in more traffic and noise, clogging up the roads you usually take, and exchanging the chirping of birds for honking car horns. Dan Freeman, lives on Bleaker Street, had a store built in the area recently and he says, "its changed so much".

Service innovation. Customers are open to increasingly outsourcing supply chain and logistics activities to third parties. Flexible and innovative solutions are highly important to gain and retain profitable market share.

Switching Cost: If there is anything that can go in favor of a new entrant is switching cost of the buyer. Only loyalty buyers typically have these days is to value. If a new entrant can offer better value, buyers can switch to the new entrant with no switching cost. Better value can only come from sacrificing profits which might deter new entrants as a low profit margin does not promises long term growth.

Now that some of the cons were revealed, there are also many benefits to having a big box retailer in a community. One of the largest, most obvious of these is, of course, that of helping the communities to grow.

All companies have core competencies that they use to differentiate their company, product, or service from the competition, Sears is no exception. Also, it is common for a company’s core competencies to change, as their industry progresses through phases and shifts its emphasis between product and process innovations (Regis University, 2011), Sears is no exception. Yet, when a company’s core competencies become misaligned and no longer supports their strategic intent the business is in danger of becoming obsolete (Regis University, 2011), as their customers no longer perceive the unique benefits the company has

In business, three major strategies comprising of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies exist. The focus strategy emphasizes on providing services and products to a specified buyer group or market segment within a given geographic market. The differentiation approach is often defined as provision of services or products that are perceived to be unique in the market place. Wal-Mart emphasizes on the long-term strategy of cost leadership. Through this strategy, the company ensures that it offers customers with quality products at relatively lower prices than other providers in the industry. Through overall cost leadership strategy, Wal-Mart has been offering better quality products at a lower price than any competitor can offer. For the organization to achieve this goal, it has developed long-term supply chain management, which ensures that products are made available to the market at the required time (Enz, 2010).

The five generic competitive strategies are low-cost provider, broad differentiation, focused low-cost, focused differentiation strategy, and best-cost provider strategy. According to the textbook, “a company’s competitive strategy deals exclusively with the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully” (Gamble, 93).

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: Effective supply chain management is one of the most important operational strategies that allow company to enjoy sustainable competitive advantage. More than the manufacturing expenses the distribution costs are high. If a retail firm has a proper supply chain management it can cut down the cost and have a competitive advantage of providing goods at lower cost. The cross docking concept that was introduced by the Wal-Mart was one of effective concept.

Today’s customers are more aware and empowered, and have more bargaining power due to the exponential increase in competition – direct, indirect or substitute. In retailing, they want hassle-free shopping, have less time at their disposal to locate the shop and the merchandise and are reluctant to keep waiting. The modern format retail stores are doing their best to anticipate the customer’s demands and are going all out to redesign their store interiors, offer more choices in varieties and assortments, and are giving as many services as feasible.

Suppliers in the industry seek buyers who can move a lot of merchandise in a short period of time. The threat of substitution is a big deal in this industry. Most retail stores carry the same types of products with little differentiation. This makes it difficult for companies in this industry to keep customers coming back. This places an emphasis on the need to build a good reputation with customers.

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

For example, Primark is offering to their customers the high quality, at value for money. It is supported by service promised by