Crafting and Executive Strategy at Coles

Crafting and Executive Strategy at Coles

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Strategic Management provides ways through which ant organization management can achieve the set objectives. Coles Company assesses the five strategies as explained below in order to decide on the best strategy that would ensure they outshine their competitors. (Wright, 1987 pg.100)

Low-cost provider strategies would enable Coles Company to work around the clock and ensure that they produce goods and sell at a lower cost than their competitors thereby attracting more customers. This strategy would ensure that Coles Company produces quality products at lower cost and therefore the customers get value for their money as well as best value of the product. This strategy ensures that the company will always strive to always keep the products at high quality. Coles Company must also be able to determine factors that will help them achieve low cost provider strategy such as controlling overhead costs and construction of an efficient facility (Murray, 1988).

A broad differentiation strategy aims at differentiating the products made by Coles Company from those made by its major rivals. This strategy is important bearing in mind the different tastes and preferences that exist between different customers. To be able to produce good that attract majority of consumers, this strategy can be successful if the management of the Coles Company does a market research to study and determine the different customer needs and therefore will be able to differentiate from its competitors by positioning itself as a Company that produces unique products to attract customers. For example, being able to serve customers anywhere and creating barriers to new comers by creating unique products.

Focused (or market niche) low – cost strategy will help Cole Company to be able to exploit difference in behavior in some segments in the market such as the narrow- buyer. This focus strategy will be successful if Coles Company has enough resources and is able to deal with high costs which the competitors cannot manage.

Focused (or market niche) differentiation strategy is another focus strategy where Coles Company will seek to offer its niche buyers something different from its rivals thus reducing competition from new firms by Cols’ Company niche.

A best – cost provider strategy will enable Coles Company provide the best services to customers and thus they will be able to get a value for their money. Coles Company will have to ensure that they are positioned near the center of the market in order to capture many customers and produce medium quality goods at an above average price as compared to competitors and also high quality goods at above average or slightly higher prices.

From the above five strategies, the best that should be adopted by Coles Company should be broad differentiation strategy as it will enable an increase in the number of units of its products it will sell and also increase the number of brand loyalty sold to customers thus being able to remain competitive in the market (Miller,1992)

Vision Statement: We work to always help the citizens live healthier lives by providing high quality and fresh produce from farms in less than 12 hours.

Mission Statement: To become the number one food producer in the country by selling the highest quality, freshest farm produce, from farm to customer in less than 12 hours.

The management of Coles Company has to come up on ways of setting up their objectives for the next five years. These objectives have to cut across several areas in the company such as finance, sales and marketing, human resources and customer services. The major financial objective of Coles Company is to improve the growth in revenue and earnings by 20% in the next five years and also to increase its capital base by 50% by attracting new shareholders and investors to the company. The company has also set the sales and marketing objectives for the next five years in order to stay competitive. In its set objectives, the Coles Management is determined to lower costs of its products relative to those offered by their competitors in the next one year in order to attract a wider customer base. In the next one year, the prices will be lowered by 5 % and subsequently by 2% in the next 4 years to increase their customer base by 60% in major cities.

The management has also focused a lot on the ways that they will be able to improve customer services in the next five years. Coles Company will in the next five years strive to provide quality and efficient services to all its customers by increasing employee turnover by 10% yearly in order to increase the number of its employee to offer services to the customers. The company is also set to buy two vans in the next two years which will be facilitate easy and faster delivery of products to its customers and thus reducing delivery time while at the same time work towards reducing the number of complaints from customers and also improving response time of client’s inquiries or complaints by increasing the number of customer care offices from the current two to five in the next five years.

References

Hambrick, D. (1983) An empirical typology of mature industrial product environments Academy of Management Journal, 26: 213-230.

Miller,D.(1992)The generic strategy trap” in The Journal of Business Strategy 13(1):37-41

Murray, A.I. (1988) A contingency view of Porter’s generic strategies. Academy of Management Review, 13: 390-400.

Wright, P. (1987) A refinement of Porter’s strategies. Strategic Management Journal, 8: 93-101.