Along with being in competition with themselves, they also need to worry about Kohl’s, Target, gas, and the internet. Everyone is trying to sell at the lowest price to help attract and retain you as a customer. What is amazing is that Costco doesn’t seem to have advertising on the television; they rely on word of mouth, whereas you see Wal-Mart commercials periodically. 2.) Sam’s, Costco and BJ’s all seem to have the same strategy just with slight differences, they all try to have high quality and low cost.
Blue Niles economical supply chain and comparatively low operating costs allowed it to sell comparable-quality jewelry at substantially lower prices than the leading competitor. Blue Nile found a way to exclusively make arrangements that allowed diamond and gem supplier’s products on the website. These arrangements included multi-year agreements where only designated diamonds were offered only on their website. Second, they didn’t purchase a diamond or gem from suppliers until a customer placed an order. In contrast, traditional jewelers had far bigger
* Internal Rivalry: HIGH Costco, Target and Wal-Mart represent oligopoly that hold a vast majority of the market-share. In the past, each of these firms had a separate market segment, so the competition among them was minimum. Fort example, Target concentrated on little affluent neighborhood whereas Wal-Mart concentrated on rural neighborhood. However, with the growth of such firms as target and Costco, when they started looking to expand their market segment beyond what they already had, Wal-Mart faced a very stiff competition. As such, all the major discounted retail stores started vying for each other in the same location, hence the competition among them remains very strong.
They have a good variety of products to shop for. Wal-Mart has many competitors, but one of the strengths that the company has the ability to lower the prices for their customers need. Wal-Mart can be consider a unique store because of one special strategy that they have. The strategy consists of comparing the prices of the other stores, if the other store has an ad of a lower price than Wal-Mart, then they will give it to them to the same price. Many costumers is one of the plus that they give to Wal-Mart because this means that they don’t have to go store by store catching all the specials that they have.
Define the elements of the Internal Analysis utilizing SWOT as per the chapter 3 and the charts on pages 42 & 43. Be as detailed as possible. STRENGTHS * Higher Income Shoppers * Low employee turnover * High salary * Strong management * Private Brand label (Kirkland Signature) * Return Policy- hassle free * Attracts business customers | WEAKNESSES * Modify aging stores * Vendor satisfaction * Ambitious expansion plan * Lax quality control * Strong dependency on providers * Word of Mouth Advertising * Low margin * Leader-James Senegal 79 | OPPORTUNITIES * Expansion overseas and market presence * Increase online sales * Ancillary services * Private Brand label (Kirkland Signature) * Attracts business customers * Expand wholesaling-Internet Sales * Consumer-travel, optical, auto * Financial, * Insurance * Pharmacy * Recycle | THREATS * Increasing competition * Subprime crisis * Low consumer confidence * Low promotional activity * Diversification * Expand wholesaling * Customers have high mobility | Internal Factors STRENGTHS The strengths of Costco’s strategic plan include strong management, low employee turnover, high compensation, strong customer business base, strong private brand (Kirkland) and generous return policy. The company policy is committed to promoting from within their own ranks, filling as many as 86% of higher-level openings in their stores. This allows them to be competitive by staffing their stores with knowledgeable employees which increases customer satisfaction as well as decreasing staff turnover.
The strategy of Costco was low prices, a limited product line and limited selection, and a “treasure hunt” shopping environment. In terms of pricing, Costco was known for selling top quality brands products at prices below other wholesale or retail outlets. Costco kept prices low to members and capped margins on brand-name products at 14 percent and 15 percent as well as on private label Kirkland signature items. However, unlike Wal-Mart or Target that provide wide ranges of product selections, Costco provided members with a selection of only about 4000 items. The product range did cover a broad spectrum of categories but each category had a limited selection and products were usually packaged in bulk and targeted to large families and businesses.
While Sam’s club does have 183 more stores, Costco leads Sam’s Club in the number of member of members at their stores. Costco has 58.8 million members, and Sam’s Club only has 47 million (Thompson, 2011, p. 244). As far as Costco’s and Sam’s Club’s strategies are quite similar. They are both focused on providing quality products at the lowest possible price. BJ’s takes a different direction and offers products in lower quantities.
Milton Hershey successfully integrated the business with the community and the relationship was one of mutual beneficence. The current leadership was mainly concerned about money and not leadership. Not to say that money is not an important factor, but the special relationship between the survival of the town and Hershey Foods required strong consideration. The Attorney General had it right in declaring that HTC needed to make changes. Still, selling Hershey foods was not the answer.
Another important of Hill Country’s culture and managerial philosophy was caution and risk aversion. From that reason they choose zero debt financing and fund internally hold large cash balances. From the discussion of our team members, some of members think that it is too risk aversion position. Only efficiency will be stuck in near future so they should invest somewhat risky project and raise the debt. The others think that it is unique and fresh and in
ERP does not improve the individual efficiency of users, so if they expect it, it will be a big disappointment. ERP improves the cooperation of users. Management believed that Enterprise 21 project would help Hershey better execute its business strategy of emphasizing its core mass-market candy business. b) Increased Efficiency Mainly, ERP software urges on integration and tends to not care about the daily needs of people. I think individual efficiency can suffer by implementing ERP.