Critical Success Factors of Woolorths
Although has not become the big four retailer, Woolworths continues exhibiting attractive performance in Australia retailing industry. The success of Woolworths is due to several factors as following: Maintaining The Strengths of Main Chain Supply chain is important success factor in retailing industry. For this reason, the company continues strengthening their online stores since they believe online commerce becomes growing market especially in special occasion like Christmas season.
In addition, the company also improves their online services by conduct huge investment in their IT systems. Delivering “Fresh Food for People” As customers increasingly aware of the benefits of quality foods, the tagline of Woolworths in their food business, “Fresh Food for People” becomes the key success factors that drag over 13 million customers to visit Woolworths’s 700 supermarkets throughout Australia. Providing Excellent Customers Services Retail industry is prone to unsatisfied customers since retailers sell many products and customers must not fulfilled by the available products.
To cope with the issue, Woolworths provide quality staff to help customers have unforgettable shopping experience (Woolworths Supermarkets, 2007) Internal Analysis Not all companies understand the meaning of competitive advantages. When asked about the competitive advantages of the company, most managers will elaborate the internal processes of the company and how they perform improvement within internal processes. No doubt, internal processes are the key ingredients to create competitive advantages, but competitive advantages itself are about how the internal enhancement translates to external performance.
Competitive advantages can only be measure by how stakeholders of the company gain benefits from the enhancement of internal processes (Hill, 2004). In the light of this elaboration, I will explain some of the internal processes of the company that translates into external competitive advantages. By using SWOT Analysis, the company internal analysis is as following: Strengths Online and Traditional Retailing The company has a well-maintained website that serves online ordering of most of its products. Starting their stores in Sydney, the company has now expanded their services throughout the Australia.
This provides customers with state of the art retail services. Customers can browse for items from their homes or order the products online and have it delivered to the house. Australian Household Name The vast existence of Woolworth’s supermarkets, which render Woolworths to be second largest private employer in Australia, make the company to be the generic household name in the Australia. It means the company has gained strong brand equity in Australian consumers’ minds (Woolworths Supermarkets, 2007b).
Smarter Distribution
Woolworths has a state of the art distribution center which has just recently been built in Bedford. The facility has the latest handling system and also consists of various environmentally sensitive systems and environmental innovations. This means product management will be dealt with a new level of professionalism. The system ensures availability of the products at all times according to the region specifications. For customers, this means dependability and for shareholders, this mean customers’ trusts. Weaknesses
Despite the strengths of Woolworths Company in retailing industry, the company has also several weaknesses because the company faces many rivals from various industries they serve: supermarkets, liquor to petrol. Since each industry has specialized retailers, Woolworths face great challenges from such retailer has better bargain to supplier so that the retailers can provide lower price. Woolworths still focuses on Australia and New Zealand market while other retailer has expanded into foreign market. This situation will bring down the company competitive advantage when serving market from other countries.
