SAINSBURY`S

SAINSBURY`S

Sainsbury`s

Company Snapshot

Sainsbury's is one of the leading supermarket retailers in the world and the third largest chain of supermarkets in Britain. The chain is owned by J Sainsbury plc, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Sainsbury's in 2011 made a turnover of 21.102 billion pounds. The retailer chain has a work force of over 150,000 skilled employees. In total, the chain has 504 supermarkets and 319 convenience stores globally ( www.j-sainsbury.co.uk) .

Sainsbury's was founded by John James Sainsbury, who opened the first shop in Holborn, London in 1869. Thus, the retailer is world's oldest supermarket chain, followed by Danish Irma from 1886. In the year1922 it became the largest chain in Britain, and it was also the market leader in the 1980s. Sainsbury`s took over the position in 1995 and ASDA became the second largest in 2003, which meant that Sainsbury's were relegated to third place. The two main segments in which the company operates are the food retailing companies and the financial services. Sainsbury is a huge company and serves approximately 16 million customers every week. It has 752 supermarkets which includes 297 convenience stores in the United Kingdom.

Literature Review

To know about the true contribution of Porter and its effect on business environment there is a need to analyze the era of 1950s and 1960s. This is called the sales era. They just focused on selling the products and the concept is known today as sales orientation period. It was 1970s which saw the surge of marketing oriented firms, many writers at Harvard came up with arguments that sale orientation is not the answer to the owner's woes of more profit and sales. The concept of first knowing the needs of customer and then producing, fulfilling their needs was evolved. Thus customer was considered the king and has been the driving force behind all the strategic decision making process in an organization (Thomas, 2007).

Marketing environment is a term of marketing, which means all external forces have a significant impact on an organization`s performance and an organization should maintain successful relationships with clients from its target group. Marketing environment and macro environment is formed by the current macroeconomic conditions and microenvironments formed by current microeconomic conditions (Eisenhardt & Sull, 2007). The environment is composed of five elements:

Controllable factors - those that are subject to the strategy pursued by marketers of the company. Senior management take decisions on matters relating to the objectives and role of marketing and other business functions. All aspects of marketing are affected by these decisions.

Uncontrollable factors - those that affect the company's operations, but cannot be controlled. No matter how well done is a marketing plan; it can be ruined under the influence of these factors. Uncontrollable variables are: users

Competitive structure of the industry (monopoly , oligopoly , free competition or monopolistic competition);

Competition in the brand and origin;

Competition in distribution channels;

Existence of independent media.

Porters 5 Force Model

An industry is a group of firms that markets products which are probably close substitutes to each ...