Issues in the Environment of the Company

Discuss about the Principles of Marketing for Woolworths Limited.

Woolworths supermarkets, originated in Australia, deals with the supermarket and grocery stores across Australia. It is owned by the Woolworths limited, with its headquarters at Bella Vista, New South Wales.  Woolworths specialises in retailing groceries, and various other consumer goods to the people. Woolworths has a chain of 840 supermarkets  across Australia, 156 supermarkets in New Zealand ,  successfully promoting and further expanding the business. In the year 2012, Woolworths has been marked as the largest retail chain dealing with consumer products in Australia (Woolworthslimited.com.au 2016).

This report on Woolworths present a detailed analysis on the retail chain industry by laying stress on the issues that are prevailing in the environment of the company, the STP strategy related to the company , i.e., segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy of the people, the marketing strategy of the company. In the ends the report has been presented with some recommendations for the company that would help the company to enhance the productive growth of the organization.

Woolworths is one of the best retail company in today’s world . It has been in business for the past many years thereby expanding with its business successfully. Currently the company is facing some issues that is disturbing the atmosphere of the business.

According to Armstrong et al. (2014), one of the vital issues that the company is dealing with, is that, there is an ardent need of  an efficient executive manager which would deal with the issues overcoming in the company’s environment.

There are some policies framed by Woolworths  that flawed and thereby resulted in creating economic pressures in the company. Such policies were like “cheap cheap” and “low cost/high supply”. These policies were unable to maintain the strategical framework (Dos Santos,  Svensson and Padin 2013).

One of the prior issues of the retail industry is that, the company has to deal with various labour union issues. Mass firing of labours have been experienced by the labours of the company that resulted in performance issues of the staff. As stated by Bolton  (2015) , as the customers in the retail industry is directly related to the staffs of the stores, it creates disincentive regarding the productive growth of the company.

Woolworths comprises of the most trusted brands in its retail chain. It serves millions of customers every day. It has maintained its position of being one of the most renowned organizations of the  retail industry . In order to maintain the position, Woolworths follows an extensive segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy that helps the company to enhance its sales and thereby raising the profit margin (Bickhoff,  Hollensen and Opresnik  2014) .

STP Strategy

Segmentation –  segmentation deals with dividing the mass of customers based on some specific attributes. There are four kinds of segmentation categories that helps an organization to differentiates the customers based on geographic, demographic, behavioural and psychographic attributes. Based on the geographical diversion, different cultural differences of the customers are taken into account. In order to promote a particular brand or product of a company, it is quite essential to segment their customers in order to proceed with the promotion process (Hanlon 2013). The company segments its customers based on gender, standard of living, income of the people, concentration of the population, demand for organic and natural food products, etc.

Targeting – after performing the segmentation of the customers, the next step that follows is market targeting. Targeting helps to focus and promote the chosen segment of the population in order to introduce the new products of the company. As per Schlegelmilch (2016), for a retail industry like Woolworths, targeting objective is not  prime method of marketing strategy, as the company deals with a variety of products, that focus on many segments of the society rather than any one of them. Yet, merging of the company with new brands creates some possibility for Woolworths to target the segments as per that new product.

Positioning- positioning is the third stage of marketing strategy that is followed by Woolworths. In this strategy, the creates a market overview based on the attributes of the product. The characteristics are then aligned with the chosen segment of the society . This helps in positioning the right products to the right customers, thereby, providing them with the correct form of marketing mix.

The main aim of Woolworths is to deliver the right shopping experience to its customers each and every time . The mission statement of the company is s follows –

“We, as passionate committed retailers, understand and lead our customers through excellence and a deep knowledge of our products and services and the world we live in. The key strategic priority for Woolworths is to build up a multi-option retailing in term of low price, good quality products and services, in stores experience to meet customer requirement. Woolworths has been ranked as the largest online retailer in Australia and New Zealand ”

In order to achieve their mission statement, Woolworths have been following various strategies that helps in maintaining their position till date. The strategic prioritize of the company are as follows –

Marketing Strategy

Extending leadership in food products – Woolworths aim at establishing market campaigns that would add value for the stakeholders and in return enhance the business productivity of the company. It would raise the market share of the organization in Australia with special implementation on in line stores, fresh products and value goods (Kotler et al. 2015). Woolworths aims at breaking the sales growth point by maintaining the “australia’s fresh food people” marketing campaign. It has launched this program by utilising the innovative method of “the voice”. The company aims at playing the lead in retailing food and liquor.

Act on portfolio – According to Feigin (2016), Woolworths aims at evaluating the electronics business which it has planned to start in order to establish the acquisition with dick smith. It is also focussing various alignments with other companies and suppliers that would help the company to acquire more customers and add value to the marketing strategies of the company. Woolworths have already maintained their position as implementer of hotel and pubs. It is their aim to maintain such a role in future.

Maintaining track record –  being australia’s most trusted retailer , it aims at supporting innovative practices that would help in creating unique techniques and effects in order to promote their retail chain and raise the sustainability and profitability of the organization. It aims at expanding its business globally, that would help in enabling new growth segments for the company(Berning 2014).

New area of growth –  maintaining an effective supply chain management of the company would enable the organization to move a step ahead towards profitability. An extensive supply chain management helps to fuel the growth of the company. The company aims at improving the long term relations with the stakeholders and would add more investment in business thereby, raising the value (Pride and Ferrell 2016). The company initiates changed in the staffing policy that would help in selecting the best talent for improving the working condition of Woolworths.

Woolworths has an assigned list of values that includes marketing the goods with responsibility, responding to the customers’ needs and fulfilling their demands, looking after the worker’s right and providing them with various facilities, raising the bar ob animal welfare, ensuring responsibility while selling liquors in store.

Pricing strategy is the most important strategy that is followed in retal industry. In orr to facilitate growth, sales and profit, Woolworths should lay their prime focus on –

• Cost leadership structure
• Strategic merging
• Product propagation
• People prioritized development

Recommendations

Cost leadership structure – fro Woolworths, maintaining a cost leadership is of prime importance. They must implement an integrated structure of actions that would allow the company to produce and deliver quality products at the efficient price. It would help Woolworths to generate maximum outputs and at low costs. Woolworths has already processed the “sales up/costs down” strategy, which ensures to design products at lower costs of production. Woolworths have successfully implemented such policies in their business.

Woolworths must analyse the efficient management strategies that would help them to generate efficient schemes and policies to upgrade the level of business and thereby release more profits for the company. Woolworths should initiate plans to manage the supply chain in order to decrease the costs of excess handling of goods . The future prediction system must be revised, as the cost of inventory is too high for the company when the predicting analysis is poor (Khanna and Palepu 2013).

Strategic merging – another recommendation which is quite vital for Woolworths to develop strategic alliance with various brands and production companies that would help in overcoming the further costs of processing the business. Woolworths must raise their plans of correlating themselves with other business and brands, it would help them to grab more customers and raise the market share of the company (Simkin 2016). With a rise in the number of new retailers in the market, it is feasible for Woolworths to raise their alliance with those retailers, rather than let them grow as competitors. Woolworths must also initialise various reward program that would help in laying short term impact on the sales and revenue of the company (Methner, Hamann and Nilsson  2015).

Product propagation –  dealing with a huge variety of consumer goods, propagating their products would help Woolworth to instigate the demand for the goods aiming the existing customers and also attract new customers towards itself. Woolworths aims at selling fresh vegetables and fruits that has been brought directly from the farm. It helps in attracting the people who are driven by consuming fresh demands in order to use fresh food products for themselves. Introducing luxury brand products along with daily consumer goods , would attract the people towards the supermarket and it would even help the company to globalise in future with a broader base (West, Ford and Ibrahim 2015).

People prioritized development – retailing is considered as a highly focussed business with high priority to people. Woolworths must initialize various plans and policies that help in providing the people associated with the company to attain maximum advantages. This would allow the people to maintain their trust in the company thereby making Woolworths one of the trusted brand of the country.

Conclusion

Woolworths is prestigious retail industry of Australia , that aims at being the largest retail chain of consumer goods in the country in the future years to come. In order to maintain its position as the leader of the retail sector, Woolworths implements various structural and operational reforms. It is  a 92 years old company that has spread all around Australia (Woolworths Online 2016) .

In spite of such a good background of the company ,the company faces various issues  within the environment of the organization. An extensive segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy has been maintained by Woolworths that provides them with the incentive of raising their sales. The marketing strategy laid by the company is quite efficient in nature to help them to gain maximum market share, thereby raising the profit margin.  The recommendations presented in the report are clearly listed by keeping the well-being of the company as the basic priority.

Reference

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.

Berning, A., 2014. Sustainable supply chain engagement in a retail environment: the case of Woolworths food suppliers (Doctoral dissertation, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University).

Bickhoff, N., Hollensen, S. and Opresnik, M., 2014. Step 2: Strategic and Operative Marketing Planning—Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning. In The Quintessence of Marketing (pp. 47-110). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Bolton, S., 2015. Woolworths workers back at work. Green Left Weekly, (1065), p.3.

Dos Santos, M.A., Svensson, G. and Padin, C., 2013. Indicators of sustainable business practices: Woolworths in South Africa. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 18(1), pp.104-108.

Feigin, L.M., 2016. The effects of protests and boycotts on a brand and its reputation: a case study on Woolworths and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) (Doctoral dissertation, The IIE).

Hanlon, A., 2013. The Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning model-Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice.

Khanna, T. and Palepu, K., 2013. Winning in emerging markets: A road map for strategy and execution. Harvard Business Press.

Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L. and Armstrong, G., 2015.Marketing. Pearson Higher Education AU.

Methner, N., Hamann, R. and Nilsson, W., 2015. The Evolution of a Sustainability Leader: The Development of Strategic and Boundary Spanning Organizational Innovation Capabilities in Woolworths. In The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation (pp. 87-104). Springer International Publishing.

Pride, W. and Ferrell, O.C., 2016. Foundations of marketing. Nelson Education.

Schlegelmilch, B.B., 2016. Segmenting Targeting and Positioning in Global Markets. In Global Marketing Strategy (pp. 63-82). Springer International Publishing.

Simkin, L., 2016. 11 Segmentation. The Marketing Book, p.271.

West, D., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015. Strategic marketing: creating competitive advantage. Oxford University Press.

Woolworths Online. (2016). Woolworths Supermarket – Buy Groceries Online. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworths.com.au/ [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].

Woolworthslimited.com.au. (2016). Strategy and Objectives – Woolworths Limited. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/page/Who_We_Are/Strategy_and_Objectives/ [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].