Woolworth Business Strategy, Factors Influencing Their Brand Success

Question

Discuss the Business Strategies of Woolworths.

Answer

Introduction
The Woolworth business strategy has grown to become amount the most revered and one which has help build the retail chains in Australia and growth to capitalize over 78% of the market. The brands biggest competitor is Coles which also specializing in retailing and food supply. The Woolworth strategy specializes in the sale of vegetables, meat, and fruits, dairy, stationary and electronics (Woolworthslimited.com.au 2016). Woolworths has over 981 outlets distributed across various cities in Australia and continues to retain its head office in New South Wales. Brad Banducci is the Woolworths director and was largely viewed as being the reason behind the company registering a 40 billion $ turn over in 2015. The brand has developed a reputation for delivering fresh food produce to the customer from certified Australian growers and farmers which have helped earn the brand the name The Fresh Food People.

Woolworths Strategic Issues
Similar to other international supermarket and retail brands, the Woolworth strategy prioritizes its customer experience and expectations as its main business strategy. Woolworths has developed a positive reputation amount its customers but at the same time, it’s important for the brand to retain its market position and reputation. Competitors remain always vigil regarding brands performance and are constantly providing new products as well as delivering customer services. It’s important to determine competitive advantage in order for Woolworths to develop a suitable strategic management approach. Customers are the drivers of brand c\value as well as its reputation and growth in the market. This makes it important for the brand to adopt effective business strategies in order for the business to retain its market position. Woolworth will have to adopt unique strategies linked to marketing and its operation which will ensure the brand retains its future growth (Phillipov2012). To meet consumer expectations, it is essential for the business to develop modern communication medium due to the increasing use of digital technology. More people use smartphones and computers today which make it important for the Woolworths to deliver modern communication medium that allow the consumer to shop at their convenience even without physically needing to visit the store. It is important for Woolworths to also consider providing delivery services as this would deliver an additional strategic advantage over competitors thus allowing Woolworth branches to increase customer retention due to the added facilities they offer.

Reducing customer loss
The Woolworth strategy has been reported to have a high customer turnover rate due to multiple reasons. This makes it important for Woolworths to focus its attention on customer retention strategies to help the business increase the number of customers which will automatically increase the business's profitability and turn over (Ariyawardanaet al. 2016). It is essential for Woolworth’s to focus their attention on retaining customers by offering value-added services to its customers. Woolworths caters to over 18 million customers on a weekly basis making it important for the business to focus its attention on addressing customer needs. This makes collecting consumer feedback and important requirement for all business and one which is mandatory for Woolworths to infuse to its operations to help identify customer needs based on which improvement strategies can be designed (Jie 2012). Customer feedback plays a huge role in the businesses performance thus it’s important for Woolworths to organize for quantitative data collections strategies. Questionnaires, online surveys, customer feedback forms, and other data collection methods must be used to collect customer feedback and map their expectations Bailey et al. (2015). Customer expectations play a huge role in influencing a business's operations as it delivers information on customer expectations based on which the Woolworth strategy and operations can be modified.

Adoption of Innovative Technologies
IT technologies are currently dominating global communication and marketing, making it imperative for businesses to develop technologies which deliver an advanced technological solution to the consumer. A perfect example of this is the use of smartphone applications for shopping, making it important for Woolworths to also develop an advanced smartphone application which delivers access to all consumers without needing to switch on their computer or visit the store. Developing a smartphone application will allow customers to conveniently shop via the application which will directly contribute towards the business's performance and growth. The application should be able to deliver diverse facilities including product displays, their sale, reviews, and ratings. This is important for the business as it will help reduce the number of manual interventions and staff required to perform the analysis and data collection. In addition to delivering customers with a convenient communication medium, the adoption of IT technologies will also help the business improve its operations considerably.

Market Competition
Consumer goods remain as being the most important products globally resulting in this being a highly competitive industry. Woolworths may only be experiencing competition from Coles in the Australian market, but this also opens up a huge market for other business owners who intend on starting similar businesses. In most situations, competitors will use established companies to establish their infrastructure. This makes it important for large companies like Woolworth’s to aggressively develop and upgrade their infrastructure in order to deter competitor encroachment. Competitors will usually avoid corporate competitors due to the intense competition they deliver as well as the vast amounts of competition they provide. Competitor analysis will allow Woolworth’s to determine specific processes followed by competitors which can be used towards improving the businesses operations. Understanding competitors will allow the Woolworth business strategy managers to understand their competitors which is critical towards the business remaining ahead of competitors and retaining their market position.

Product Promotions and Campaigns
Consumers can only know Woolworth’s offers products if the brand promotes the products and services by marketing and advertisement. It is important for Woolworths to adopt a marketing strategy which promotes its products and services to consumers using multiple modes of communication. This is important since consumers depend on different modes of communication thus Woolworth’s needs to make sure each communication medium is available for consumers to access. Radio and Television remain as being the most important modes of promoting a product or services but app advertisement and online marketing are also growing at a rapid rate amount of consumers. While organizing the marketing strategies, it’s important for Woolworth’s to adopt a marketing strategy which offers flexibility but at the same time, it also does not over-emphasis on marketing a certain product or service to the consumer Budisantoso and Teoh(2013). This is particularly a problem with internet marketing where it is common to find advertisement being displayed for a product or service which may have been searched for using a search engine. In case of product promotions changes, it’s important for Woolworth’s to also reorganize its change management strategy which will ensure the staff and stakeholders are trained and equipped to manage the marketing changes. This is especially important while adopting new technologies as this will help the business retain its productivity despite changing its marketing and advertising operations Richards et al. (2012). With an increasing number of marketing strategies being implemented in business today, it has become critical for businesses to adopt modern technologies as this will ensure they are able to expose their products and services to a large audience which is the primary ingredient of increasing exposure, sales and ultimately revenue.

Important Strategic Marketing Tools
In order for Woolworth’s to organize an effective marketing strategy plan, it is imperative to utilize various marketing tools like PESTEL and SWOT to evaluate and assess the market. Multiple tools require to be used to ensure the business evaluate each aspect influencing its operations and management. Both the SWOT and PESTLE evaluate different aspects of marketing which makes both important towards business marking management.

PESTLE Analysis: PESTLE stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors influencing marketing environments. Each plays an influencing part towards the businesses operations making it imperative for business analysts to assess each one to determine their influencing on business operations based on which strategic marketing campaigns can be developed. PESTLE Analysis is best performed on the tabular format as this allows the analyst to review all details on a single view thus helping determine similarities and differences Zurzoloet al. (2013). It also helps highlight important points to be addressed Marketing obstacles a business is likely to experience while establishing itself or upgrading its marketing operations (Lawrence al. 2013).

SWOT Analysis: SWOT analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats a business is expected to encounter during its establishment or operations. SWOT analyses are mainly performed during the establishment of a business and this analysis outlines the above factors associated with business operations. Similar to the PESTLE, the SWOT analysis is also best performed using the tabular format as this will help the business

Recommendations and Conclusion
The Woolworth business strategy has developed its brand value in the Australian market which is an important requirement in business. It is essential to make sure that each of the businesses performance measures is being closely monitored to determine the most suitable marketing strategies as well as the marketing approaches to be adopted by the company. It can, therefore, be concluded that Woolworths is capable of reporting better performance once the business has outlined important strategy drivers. This is important as it allows the business to secure important information based on which the business and management can design future approaches to be used to enhance business operations using an effective Woolworth strategy. · Woolworth business strategy assignments are being prepared by our business assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable total assignment help service.

References
Ariyawardana, A., Ganegodage, K. and Mortlock, M.Y., 2016. Consumers' trust in vegetable supply chain members and their behavioral responses: A study based in Queensland, Australia. Food Control.

Arli, V., Dylke, S., Burgess, R., Campus, R. and Soldo, E., 2013. Woolworths Australia and Walmart US: Best practices in supply chain collaboration. Journal of Economics, Business, and Accountancy| Ventura,16(1), pp.27-46.

Bailey, J., Price, R., Pyman, A. and Parker, J., 2015. Union power in retail: contrasting cases in Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations (Online), 40(1), p.1.

Bailey, M., 2016. Absorptive Capacity, International Business Knowledge Transfer, and Local Adaptation: Establishing Discount Department Stores in Australia. Australian Economic History Review.

Budisantoso, T. and Teoh, T.T., 2013. Shopping Experience and Their Influence on Satisfaction in Australia and Indonesia. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Managing the Asian Century (pp. 583-589). Springer Singapore.

Chan, K., 2012. Legislation of a historic but politically unpopular carbon tax in Australia. Carbon Management, 3(3), pp.243-247.

Chapman, K., Kelly, B., Bauman, A., Innes‐Hughes, C. and Allman‐Farinelli, M., 2014. Trends in the cost of a healthy food basket and fruit and vegetable availability in New South Wales, Australia, between 2006 and 2009. Nutrition & Dietetics, 71(2), pp.117-126.

Economou, A., 2012. Meat monopolies. Dissent, (40), p.36.

Gupte, J. and Doyle, J., 2014. Woolworths becomes a health destination'.AJP: The Australian Journal of Pharmacy, 95(1125), p.4.

Jie, F., 2012. The roles of trust and commitment in the Australian Lamb Retailers/Wholesalers. Australian Farm Business Management Journal, 9(1), p.49.

Keith, S., 2012. Coles, Woolworths and the local. Locale: The Australasian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies, 2, pp.47-81.

Keith, S., 2012. Coles, Woolworths and the local. Locale: The Australasian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies, 2, pp.47-81.

Lees, G. and Winchester, M., 2012. Do competing supermarkets generally have the same sort of shoppers?.

Phillipov, M., 2012. ‘Helping Australia Grow’: supermarkets, television cooking shows, and the strategic manufacture of consumer trust. Agriculture and Human Values, pp.1-10.

Richards, C., Lawrence, G., Loong, M. and Burch, D., 2012. A toothless chihuahua? The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, neoliberalism and supermarket power in Australia. Rural Society, 21(3), pp.250-263.

Woolworthslimited.com.au (2016) Home Page Available at https://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/ [Accessed on Sep 22, 2016]

Wu, J.H., Neal, B., Trevena, H., Crino, M., Stuart-Smith, W., Faulkner-Hogg, K., Louie, J.C.Y. and Dunford, E., 2015. Are gluten-free foods healthier than non-gluten-free foods? An evaluation of supermarket products in Australia.British Journal of Nutrition, 114(03), pp.448-454.

Zurzolo, G.A., Koplin, J.J., Mathai, M.L., Taylor, S.L., Tey, D. and Allen, K.J., 2013. Foods with precautionary allergen labeling in Australia rarely contain the detectable allergen. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, 1(4), pp.401-403.