1. INTRODUCTION
Waitrose is leading UK based Retailer Company targeted at a middle class market, emphasizing quality food and customer service rather than low prices. It is the supermarket division of the John Lewis Partnership, with 187 branches as of November 2007.
UK grocery market led by big four retailers Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA and Safeway. Together with Somerfield, Iceland and Waitrose these companies take by far the largest share of the market. The food and grocery market is typically very robust and recession proof. Food sales are at the core of the supermarkets and spending on food has been growing year on year since 1990. Non foods sales account for an increasing share of supermarkets income. New planning legislation introduced by the labour government means that out of town superstores are increasingly more difficult to realise. Therefore retailers concentrate on smaller convenience stores. The liberalisation of opening times has resulted in later opening hours. Most retailers now also offer online shopping.
Waitrose’s main competitors in this market are Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s. It currently has a 4% share of the food market, and additionally a 16% and 10% share of the organic food and wet fish markets respectively. The company has a Royal warrant to supply groceries, wine and spirits to the Queen, and has a warrant to supply groceries to Queen Mother.
Waitrose was founded in 1904 by Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor, with Taylor leaving in 1906. They opened their first shop ("Waite, Rose and Taylor") at 263 Acton Hill, West London. In 1908, the name "Waitrose" (a portmanteau of the remaining founders' names) was adopted as the company was incorporated. The company (at the time with only 10 shops) was taken over by The John Lewis Partnership in 1937, with the then-160 employees becoming Partners (co-owners of the business) and generated a turnover of £150,000. Self Service was introduced in 1951 and four years later in 1955 the first Waitrose “Supermarket” was opened in Streatham, (South London) - since then, the Waitrose chain has grown to include 187 supermarkets, and in 1981 counter service was introduced for fresh meat, fish and cheese. Rapid expansion took place in the 1960s and 1970s and was supported by the opening of a technically advanced automated high bay wareshouse at Bracknell in 1972. Bracknell is also the headquarter of the partnership. Also in the 1983[1], Waitrose became the first major chain to begin selling organic food, a move since emulated by Tesco and Sainsbury's among others.
In 1994 the first Waitrose ‘food & home’ opened. These larger outlets sell a full range of foods along a selection of household good from John Lewis department stores. There are now four ‘food & home’ stores and further stores planned.
In 1996 Waitrose took over the wine merchant, Findlater Mackie Todd Ltd, that now trades in mail order wines as part of Waitrose Direct.
In 2001 Waitrose acquired 11 Somerfield stores, which have been refitted and now trade as Waitrose.
In February 2003 the roll-out of Waitrose’s redesigned corporate identity has began. The former brown was replaced with two shades of green. Stores are now being refitted and the completion of the roll out is expected for 2005.
With currently 140 stores, Waitrose now accounts for more than half of the Partmership’s total business with turnover exceeding 2 billion pounds (£60m profit for the year ending 26/01/02, +133%, 27,000 staff).
Waitrose is located mainly in the south east of the UK with stores only as far north as Newark. The typical Waitrose Store is located in town centres next to other major shopping facilities.
The average Selling Space of a Waitrose Store is under 1500 sq meter, which is fairly small. However newly opened stores tend to be of at least 2000 sq meters and preferably 2500 sq metres. With the introduction of its ‘food & home’ store format, Waitrose has also started to build in out of town locations, however, this account for only a very small share.
2. NATURE, SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Having a clear strategy means that the management and staff of an organization can appreciate where the company is heading, and the role they have in ensuring that the firms arrives at the desired destination.
As without a strategy, it argued that a business organization will not know where it is going, Waitrose decided its aim as “to provide the convenience of a supermarket with expertise and service of a specialist food shop”; its watchwords are “freshness, quality, choice and value”.
Waitrose is recognized for its focused differentiation strategy targeting the upper market with a wide rage of quality and fresh products. Indeed Waitrose has a good reputation for stocking quality products but this has led to perception of being quite expensive (“honestly priced”).
Mintzberg and Quinn, in “The Strategy Process, Concepts, Contexts, Cases”, argue that “The word strategy has long been used implicitly in different ways even if traditionally it has been defined in only one. Explicit recognition of multiple definitions can help people to manoeuvre through this difficult field.” They go on to present five definitions of strategy. The so-called five Ps for Strategy:
i) Strategy as a plan: a path to get from here to there
ii) Strategy as a pattern: consistency in behaviour over time.
iii) Strategy as a position: particular products in particular markets.
iv) Strategy as a perspective: an organization’s ways of doing things
v) Strategy as a ploy: a particular type of plan intended to send specific signals.
Waitrose has concentrated on the food and drinks market, choosing not to diversify as much as the big four retailers. Their market share cannot really be improved dramatically unless they build more stores all over the UK. It can be argued that the key to Waitrose’s continued success will be expansion of their current markets. Major competitors include Tesco, Sainsbury’s and especially Marks and Spencer who also target the upper market.
Consumers will generally buy their groceries at the most convenient place with the lowest price, and since the products they buy are identical in every chain they don’t mind which shop they buy their goods from.
Whereas retail chains competing primarily on price are trying to establish switching cost by the introduction of reward/loyalty schemes/cards, Waitrose tries to build up brand loyalty by offering differentiated, high quality products. Although Waitrose has an account card in place it is not advertised very much does not include monetary benefits to the extent others do. Instead the account card will enable customers to receive “Foods illustrated” or to receive tickets for concerts at reduced prices, which indicate its supermarket target market.
They are not renowned for reaching really broad target audiences unlike Tesco for example. Waitrose focuses on in-town stores, offering a wide rage of food products and attracting the upper socio-economic groups. These target audiences can be linked with those associated with John Lewis.
Waitrose is undertaking a range of activities to maintain their green image (e.g. Bag for Life, Environmental Report, Fairtrade Bananas). A wide range of social programmes are sponsored. Waitrose actively promotes its commitment to providing British products and offers products through partnerships with farms and dairies.
Being part of the John Lewis Partnership means that profits generated are paid back to all employess. The whole partnership proactively operates as environmentally friendly, honest, fair and ethical as possible.
Corporate Strategy
Corporate strategy is used to build an advantage over and above other organizations and relies on the effectiveness of the corporate centre. Correctly used, corporate strategy can have a number of benefits, but achieving these requires a great deal of consistent and selective thought. However, it can become a dangerous and unwieldy creature that can do far more damage than good. Many authorities are doubtful about its overall effectiveness in many cases.
3. The Process of Strategic Management
The Systematic Stages Involved in Strategic Management
Operational strategy is a ‘top-down’ reflection of what the whole group or business wants to do.
Operational strategy is a ‘bottom-down’ activity where operational improvements cumulatively build strategy.
Operational strategy involves translating market requirements into operational decisions.
Operational strategy involves exploiting the capabilities of an operation’s resources in chosen markets.
Visions, missions and mission statements
Vision
The primary role of the company’s vision, or of visioning, is to establish a dream to which all employees and other stakeholders will subscribe, and to the attachment of which they will enthusiastically direct their efforts. Creating a vision calls for creativity.
With an ambitious vision of co-ownership, and of how a business could put the happiness of its employees at the heart of everything it did, and profit by it, Wallace Wait, Arthur Rose and David Taylor left a radical mark with John Spedan Lewis on commercial history.
Effective visions are inspiring. Effective visions are clear and challenging.
Effective visions are beacons and controls when all else is up for grabs. Effective visions prepare for the future, but honour the past. Its also are lived in details, not broad strokes.
Missions and mission statement
The broad vision of an organisation is communicated through its mission or mission statement. They help to encapsulate an organisation’s goals or objectives. Mission statement does not represent an actual strategy for an organisation.
The mission statement can be more accurately described as the potential end-result of strategy or as the embodiment of a company’s visions.
As mission Waitrose’s ‘Price Commitment’ is our promise to give customers quality food that is honestly and represents excellent value. Waitrose’s pioneering approach to sourcing fresh fruit and vegetables from the regions it trades in and clearly labelling them as such has won a Gold Award from “The Grocer Magazine”.
Waitrose is targeted at a middle class market, emphasizing quality food and customer service rather than low prices. Their slogan reflects this; "Quality food, honestly priced".
PEST (Political Economic Socio Cultural and Technological) Analysis of Waitrose
Political
Any political decisions will be made with no reference to the supermarket chain. Therefore, the organization will be forced to accept any enforced conditions and regulations. However, the organisation must gauge how any changes may be implemented and be prepared to act accordingly.
The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) (2000): “The Government remains firmly committed to the objectives of PPG6, which seeks to sustain and enhance the vitality and viability of our existing city, town, district and local centres and to make them the focus for retail investment” …means that it is very difficult to get planning permission for out-of-town stores.
‘The Competition Commission’s report “The Supply of Groceries from Multiple Stores in the United Kingdom”, published in 2000, stated that the leading supermarkets like Waitrose do not operate as a cartel to keep food prices unduly high.’ (Key Note, 2001, Supermarket Services) Although some questionable practices were found (selling product at a loss, lower prices in areas of high competition), the Commission did not recommend any corrective actions.
EU Competition might not be as generous as the Competition Commission and therefore might order changes.
Economic
The risk of a European or more likely, global recession hangs over the heads of many multi-national organizations. This will inevitably lead to a reduction in consumer expenditure. The consumer market already operates on low profit margins in order to remain competitive, so further price reductions will be needed to maintain high sales volumes.
The likely takeover of Safeway by Waitrose is an indicator that competition is getting more intense with fewer but bigger players.
Socio Cultural
There are frequent and rapid changes in customer habits and needs. The increased demand for ‘one-stop’ shopping and wider product ranges has become apparent. Supermarkets must, therefore, be able to react quickly to remain competitive. The introduction of loyalty cards, petrol discounts and on-line shopping have all been recent additions.
Demand for organic and healthy foods has increased and most retailers have responded to that trend. Today customers are less prepared to pay a premium price for organic foods, which is why retail chains have started to offer own brand organic products. Waitrose has long been offering these kinds of products. Busier lifestyles increased the demand for convenient foods/ ready meals. Also notable is an increasing demand for exotic and ethnic foods from consumers.
The public has become more environmentally aware and Waitrose’s strategy fits well into this
Almost 70% of women are working and working times are longer than in any other European Country. However, women are still doing the majority of the shopping.
More than 75% of shopping trips are made by car. Public transport links are even declining as a percentage.
Technological
All retails shop like Waitrose incorporate sophisticated technology for stock control, on-line demands and checkout operation. Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) is now an essential feature of everyday shopping. Queuing time is reduced and staffing levels can also be reduced, or diverted to assist with packing, etc. The cost of such technology can be outweighed by the savings made in other areas as well as the potential for higher turnover.
Online shopping is a major new opportunity for retailers and the UK offers a good market for this with the highest percentage of people online across the EU. And ‘already more British food shoppers have converted to online grocery shopping than in any other country’ (Keynote, 2001, The Internet Grocery Market) Waitrose is now one of the UK’s biggest Internet grocer.
Information technology and Communication has enabled more sophisticated store management, with detailed statistics of products sold being made available, thus facilitating the ordering of new stocks. More attributes of the store can be steered centrally such that costs are reduced, margins increased and sales enhanced.
In August 2006, John Lewis Partnership announced it had chosen SAS forcasting solution, over five other competitors, to better manage its supply chain in its food stores. Built on SAS 9 intelligence Platform the system enable Waitrose to forecast demand on products based on information derived from the past history of each item and also the number of fundamental variables, events and holidays. A waitrose spokesperson commented that they anticipate return on investment, as well as reduced wastage and increased revenues. The start of implementation will coincide with the major Christmas retail period and the system is planned to be fully rolled out to all stores during 2007.
Extensive trials led Waitrose to believe benefits could be gained if forecasts were improved, in particular around events and promotions. Rob Thomson, Head of Supply Chain at Waitrose said: “SAS event forecasting enables us to incorporate knowledge about our business into the forecasting process and enables us to forecast the demand for thousands of items quickly and accurately. We anticipate that the return on investment we will achieve on reduced wastage and increased revenues will be significant.”
Waitrose assessed six companies using the following criteria; the product suitability, compatible company and culture, and also that the chosen company had a good understanding of Waitrose’s business. SAS fulfilled all these criteria, in particular because of the flexibility, speed and accuracy of its forecasting software. SAS will be forecasting 20,000 stock keeping units, across many branches.
The system will now be implemented into more stores this year so it can be fully trialled over the main event in retailing Christmas. Following this it is hoped the system will be fully rolled out to all stores during 2007.
4. Key Factors of Strategy Management
External Environmental Factors
Macro-environmental analysis increases managerial awareness of relevant environmental changes. Macro-environmental analysis and further attention on the primary influences of strategic change and provides time to anticipate opportunities carefully develop responses to change. In essence it acts as an early warning system.
Industry situation
Threats from other organisations, in particular new entrants into the area of business, have significant effects on the environment.
Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s have identified the sales of premium own brands as a lucrative segment with high margins. This is a major threat for Waitrose who have built up a major part of their strategy on the sales of these products. However since Tesco and Sainsbury’s are also advertising on price they can’t convince consumers of their product quality as much as Waitrose.
ASDA has been acquired by Wall-mart and can draw from a waste pool of resources. This has intensified the competition in the UK market. In comparison to the competition from Tesco and Sainsbury’s, Waitrose can offer little resistance in terms of bargaining power.
Economic and cultural
Recent changes in the economic climate have altered views on the effect on businesses. The increased reliance on technological advancement and computerisation in Western nations has led to major ‘de-layering’ and staff reduction.
As the congestion charge has introduced successfully in London, it is likely that this scheme will be extended further to other big cities in UK. This would be very threatening for Waitrose since most of their stores are located conurbation areas. Consequently the cost of travelling to Waitrose via car (car used for 75% of shopping) would increase dramatically, diversifying traffic to out of town stores.
Technological
Technology has developed so enthusiastically that author as recent as the late 1990s have already seen their thoughts outpaced by recent developments.
International environmental
Globalisation has profound effect not only on the exchange of goods and services but also at the level of ideas and understanding about the processes of business and industry. We live in a large global market place which is rapidly being made smaller by competition and advances in technology.
Legal
Organisations need to anticipate and prepare themselves for changes in legal procedures. The introduction of more restrictive regulations with regard to health and safety standards is an example
Ethical
Ethics concerns the moral principles that should govern human relations and conduct. Ethics attempts to define the meaning of human well-being and to identify the factors which cause human contentment. Ethical considerations in formulating strategy involve subjective personal feelings about human behaviour.
Internal Environmental Factors
Internal environment or strength/weaknesses are controllable activities within an organization that are performed especially well or poorly. Management, marketing, finance/accounting, production/operations, research and development, and computer information system activities of a business are areas where internal strengths or weakness arise. The process of identifying and evaluating organizational strengths and weakness in the functional areas of a business in an essential strategic-management activity.
Any organization must have a primary purpose- ‘a reason for being or existing’. Bruce and Langdon (2000) suggest that a purpose statement for the business should be written regularly.
In conjunction with the threat of the introduction of congestion charge in other major conurbation areas this appears to be a weakness because it will increase the operating cost and gives retailers with out-of-town store an advantage.
Own labels are main segment within their product mix (55%). Thus Waitrose is very dependent on this product range. As are meanwhile most retailers.
Structure
The way in which an organization is organized will have a significant influence on strategic thinking. Structure based on function, often found in large organizations; allow a considerable degree of specialization in the respective departments. Production, marketing and finance are all autonomous departments which will combine to achieve the corporate strategic aim.
Waitrose was the first to introduce self-scanning (Quick Check) in some stores, which demonstrates a willingness to innovate and offer a high service and reducing costs. The partnership with John Lewis gives Waitrose tested supplier links and economies of scale. The partnership also functions as a conglomerate therefore diversifying risk. The association with John Lewis improves Waitrose’s reputation.
After Marks & Spencer Waitrose was one of the first retailers to develop Own Brands. Own brand lines carry over 16.000 products. In 2001 ‘Perfectly Balanced’ was introduced, a new range of 117 lines including cereals, sandwiches and fresh meals. It is promoted for a fresh and healthy lifestyle.
According to a survey by Which? Waitrose is the leading supermarket chain in food quality and range. Only ASDA was rated better than Waitrose for value for money.
Also Waitrose was the first ever winner of the title Organic Supermarket of the Year and a five times winner of the accolade Supermarket Wine Merchant of the Year.
Communication
The effectiveness of communication of change can be determined by establishing three main points;
Do informal communications tend to be more significant than the formal?
Are there divisions in the organization between those who are in the know and those who are not- and what are the effects of these divisions (or lack of them) on effectiveness?
Do the communications help people to understand the way ahead for the organization?
Waitrose has specialised in the sale of wines, delicatessen, fish and meat that can be bought in store from special counters.
Along with the recent redevelopment of their new corporate identity, a new store image and layout has been developed. Gerry Maverick, Senior Development Manager says: “The changes we have made have given us a fresh new image. The new colour emphasises the quality and freshness of the business and the food we sell.”
Culture
Culture is a key mechanism in the strategy formulation process. It is the way that people are chosen, developed, nurtured, interrelated and rewarded. The kinds of people attracted to an organization and the way they can effectively deal with problems and each other are largely a function of the culture a place builds- and the practical systems that support it. In some organizations, the culture may become so strong that it is best referred to as an ideology that dominates all else.
In Waitrose, for strong culture of co-ownership, staffs are generally well motivated because they are partners and profits ultimately come back to them. Various other benefits (pension schemes, etc…) along with this make Waitrose a good employer, which satisfied employees.
5. Strategic and Options
Strategy, whether it is developed for a whole organisation or for an operating department, a functional unit or a team, follows roughly the same building process. It central concern is to create long term vision of where we want to be or what we would like to become. Keeping that clearly in mind, we need to test whether this is feasible and practicable, and to find ways of getting there.
Sequence of strategy building process:
Developing strategic purpose; the reason we are here.
The developing strategic intent; where we will fit in a future environment.
Analysing; where we are now.
Planning what we have to do to get there; our strategic plan.
Planning how we are going to do it; our tactical plan.
PEST/PESTEL Analysis
PESTEL Analysis stands for-
P – Political factor
E- Economic factor
S- Social factor
T- Technological factor
E- Environmental factor
L – Legislation
These all are external environmental factors which affects the organization. Those are covered in discussion heading (4).
SWOT Analysis
SWOT is a mnemonic standing for
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
It is a commonly used tool, familiar to most line managers. Its primary purpose is to locate the organization in its operating environment and try to assess its internal and external capabilities and vulnerabilities. Its purpose is diagnostic. Using a SWOT analysis after a PEST session is a good way of organising all the data you may have gleaned into a format which makes it easier to assimilate.
Internal Strengths and Weaknesses of Waitrose:
Strengths:
Own labels “Perfectly Balanced”
Work Deliver Scheme
Fresh/Quality Food (own farms)
Wide Range of products
Service
After Marks & Spencer Waitrose was one of the first retailers to develop Own Brands. Own brand lines carry over 16,000 products. In 2001, ‘Perfectly Balanced’ was introduced, a new range of 117 lines including cereals, sandwiches and fresh meals. It is promoted for a fresh and healthy lifestyle.
Weaknesses:
Online-Shopping
Expansion is difficult due to existing store coverage
Very dependent on the performance of own labels
External Opportunities and Threats of Waitrose:
Opportunities:
Expansion into the north-west
Retail Partnerships
Internet shopping (ocado.com)
Further exploiting the Non-food sector
Mark four stores
Threats:
Cheap-chains targeting the high end market
Overseas groups entering the market
Manufacturers are still seeking to legally slow down the penetration of own brands.
Porter’s generic strategies
No set of strategic tools would be complete without a look at Michael Porter’s definitive thinking on generic strategies. The idea first appeared in 1980 and it has enormously influenced strategic thinking.
At the heart of Porter’s generic strategies is the assumption that the organisation will seek to dominate a segment or segments of the market, seeing off all competitors by the excellence with which they serve those segments. Porter advocates, ‘ ..gaining and maintaining competitive advantage ….’. In the hypercompetitive climate in which we now operate this is increasingly difficult to achieve.
Porter’s generic strategies are as follows:
Differentiation: This implies that the organisation pursues a strategy where it offers a product or service which is unique compared with those of its competitors.
Cost leadership: This is a strategy where the organisation enables itself to provide the product(s) or service(s) at a cost less than any other competitive organisation.
Focus: This is a strategy where the organisation targets its products or services at a given sector of the market with great accuracy and with a depth of capability and knowledge to support its position in the sector.
The Ansoff matrix
This well knows model is a classic in strategy building. It primary purpose is to analyse the organisation’s approaches to its products and to its market to ensure that an appropriate marketing strategy is being pursued and possibly to revel opportunities.
Ansoff matrix illustration:
CURRENT PRODUCTS NEW PRODUCTS
CURRENT
MARKETS
Market penetration
Product development
NEW
MARKETS
Market development
Diversification
Market penetration
This strategy involves the firm looking to increase its products’ share of the markets currently served by the company. Various methods are available to the firm under this broad market penetration strategy.
Product development
Product development incorporates three broad areas of activity are Product modification via new features, Different quality levels, New products.
Market development
Offering existing company products to new markets is referred to as market development strategy. Again three broad areas of market development are New market segments, New distribution channels, New geographical areas.
Diversification
This involves a company looking at entering new areas of business.
The Ansoff matrix is a very clear and easily understood model, widely known and widely used.
While the benefit of the Ansoff matrix lies primarily in examining strategic product/market strategy, it also has value in:
Causing long-term evaluation of markets
Revealing the potential opportunities for product synergy and for market synergy and for market synergy.
Focusing on competitor activity.
The Ansoff Matrix; Growth Vector Components of Waitrose
M
A
R
K
E
T
S
E X I S T I N G
N E W
E
X
I
S
T
I
N
G
Market Penetration
Product Development
Improve service and quality
Repositioning
Withdrawal
Expand Own Brand Labels
Introduce new products
Expand to non-food sector
N
E
W
Market Development
Diversification
Internationalising & Globalization
Expand abroad
Expand north-west of UK
Online shopping
Conglomerate
Acquisitions
Product life cycle
All products whether successful or not, have a fairly typical patter of performance, although the order of performance, although the order of performance and the time scale over which the pattern emerges can, of course, differ radically.
Looking at product life cycles helps us to assess the problem stage we are at our product’s life and so, to a certain extent, to predict its likely future performance.
6. Implementation and Control
a. Strategic Implementation: A strategy is only as good as its implementation. The comment is particularly apt in this field. Strategy can bring results to a particular company, but it needs to be accurately implemented.
Within the implementation phase, inputs should come from all levels of the organisation. In effect, everyone has a role to play ensuring the strategy is implemented correctly in order to achieve the organisation’s objectives.
Effective implementation of strategy
It is evident that an organisation will only be able to effectively implement strategy if the strategies adopted are appropriate to:
The actual organisation.
The stakeholders of the organisation.
The environment that the organisation is operating in.
The resources, capabilities and competences of the organisation.
Resource allocation
The allocation of adequate resources is a crucial part of the strategy implementation process of an organisation. In allocating resources, the organisation will need to determine the approach that needs to be taken towards:
The level of resources required, and how the performance of these resources should be measured.
The availability of resources at any one time.
The scheduling of resources over a period of time.
Finance
It should be evident that finance is one the key resource requirements of any strategy. In most organisations it will be financial objectives that will serve as th ‘acid test’ of the particular business’s performance, and that will drive the allocation of other resources.
Human resources
The role of HR planning is to ensure that the organisation has the right number of staff going forward. In addition, it should be the role of the HR department to ensure the necessary skills and experiences are in place to enable the strategic objectives to be met.
b. Strategic Control
Reporting and feedback systems
Control is always an important function of the architecture of an organisation. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of strategy. The processes used make it possible to determine whether the objectives have been met, and, if so, to what degree. They also allow for appropriate alternations to the strategy to be made in a timely way.
Drucker, in The Practice of Management, states that to be able to control performance, a manager need to be clear about the objectives and must be able to measure performance and results against these objectives.
7. Summary
The development of a successful strategy ensures the future profitability of the business. However, the development of such a strategy requires a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the business environment within which the organization operates. Waitrose is pursuing a differentiation strategy targeting the up-market. Being locally concentrated in the southwest gives Waitrose opportunity to expand.
Strategic change is necessary in all organizations if they are to survive. There are many specific reasons for a change, e.g., re-focusing, acquisition, failure etc. Normally change occurs in an incremental way but occasionally step changes are necessary. Waitrose pays particular attention to social and geodemographics, along with consumer spend, before deciding on a location.
Analysis and planning is an important ingredient of successful change. However, successful change also requires and understanding of an organization’s readiness for change and the specific ways in which change will be effected.
The approach to implementation will also be dependent on the circumstances of the organisation, e.g., the position in the life cycle, size, age, culture and values, etc.
Strategy implementation consists of three main ‘strands’; resource planning, decision making and strategic change.
Resource planning concerns both the ‘macro’ issue of allocating resources between ‘units’ and the practicalities of ensuring that resource requirements at all operational level are properly identified and put in place, on time.
Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) helps Waitrose to respond to local variation in customer taste. Central Control is important to keep a consistent store image throughout the market.
Own brands are desirable products to offer, as they offer lucrative margins and a high degree of control over the marketing aspects of management. Efficient use of these products can increase store loyalty.
8. Recommendations
To communicate effectively with new and existing customers, different types of advertising and sales promotion will be carried out.
This will depend upon a number of factors:
• The size of the market
• The cost
• The type of product
• The audience reached
• The advertising of competitors
• The impact
• The law
Waitrose online shopping still has to prove itself as a profitable marketing channel. Waitrose has an elaborate system in place and successfully finished testing the service. However, it is late in the game and it remains to be seen if it can catch up with the other players.
Our goals of promotion will be:
The AIDA is the qualities that effective advertising should have. The AIDA stands for:
to attract Attention
create Interest
develop Desire
and lead to Action
Waitrose may going to carry both broadcast media which includes television, which is most effective but its also expensive, but the wider the audience are reached.
The reason of Waitrose didn’t seek to do radio advertisement is because although it’s cheap but it is not as effective as television, it doesn’t have impact of visual or any movements.
The published media which includes newspapers and magazines can gain the benefits of being targeted.
Public relations are most important for product awareness and also for sales, as by word of mouth customers can give opinions to each other where there more awareness.
In order to encourage the customers to buy the newly products, Waitrose can run a TV advertising campaign, to promote the product. The advertisement would be carefully planned to give the right information to the customers about the product, considering that it would need lot of investment to make a TV advertisement and to publicise it.
I would also go for sales promotion attempt to communicate directly with potential consumers in order to encourage them to purchase, where I would have free samples of the product, which would be only in Waitrose store in all big shopping centres where there likely to be more customers.
To increase the sales and create product awareness I would also go for advertising promotion to have coupons/vouchers to up to 10% discount for the range product in new branded wines and organic foods, so more people would buy it if it’s a discount price then its normal set price.
The main promotion would be in store to give sample products but also to give leaflets out, have store advertisements to create the product awareness.
9. References
Andrews, K (1987) The Concept of Corporate Strategy
Boddy, D (2002) Management: An Introduction, FT Prentice Hall
Bradford and Duncan (2000), Simplified Strategic Planning, Chandler House
Campbell, D et all (2002) Business Strategy, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2nd Edition
Drucker, P (1973) The Practice of Management, Pitman
Frederick S. Hillier (2004), Introduction to Operations Research
Payne, F. W (1997), Cogeneration Management Reference Guide
Heyel, C (1982), Encyclopaedia of Management
Hanson, W (2000) Principles of Internet Marketing, Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing
Johson, G and Scholes, K (2002) Exploring Corporate Strategy, 6th Edition, Practice Hall
Kotler, Philip et al. (2001) Principles of Marketing, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited
Mintzberg, H, Quinn, J and Ghosal, S (1988) The Strategy Process, Concepts, Practice Hall
Mahbubur and Raisinghani (2000) Electronic Commerce: Opportunity and Challenges, Idea Group Publishing London
Mc Goldrick, Peter (2002) Retail Marketing, Berkshire: McGraw Hill
Solomon, M (1999) Consumer Behaviour, Prentice Hall New Jersey, International Edition, 5th Edition
Thompson, J (1990) Strategic Management, Chapman and Hall
Reports:
Keynote (2003) Supermarkets & Superstores, Market Report
Keynote (2002) Supermarkets & Superstores, Market Report
Keynote (2002) E-shopping, Market Assessment
Keynote (2002) The ABC1 Consumer, Market Assessment
Mintel (2002) Home Shopping in the UK
Keynote (2001) Own Brands, Market Report
Keynote (2001) Supermarket Services, Market Assessment
Keynote (2001) E-Commerce: The Internet Grocery Market, Market Assessment
Keynote (2001) Home Shopping, Market Report
MAI (2000) Supermarket Own Labels
Waitrose: Environmental Report
John Lewis Partnership plc, Reports & Accounts
Websites:
http://www.waitrose.com/
http://www.johnlewis.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose
