Sara Lee

Sara Lee

The corporate strategy of Sarah Lee is to transform the firm into a more tightly focused company of food and beverage and household products. The center piece of this corporate strategy is the divestiture of those product categories and business units of Sara Lee, which were not performing up to the mark and were proved to be weak. Although these divestitures lowered the company's revenues to $12.3 billion; however, by doing so, it became much easier for the management of Sara Lee to exploit the financial and managerial resources of the company only on those business segments in which the brands of Sara Lee were will-positioned and had promising future prospects. The retrenchment plan aimed to drive company growth through such initiatives, which will ultimately lead to increased market shares, sales, and profitability of key brands of Sara Lee. These brands include the Ball Park meats, Sara Lee breads and bakery, Jimmy Dean sausage, Douwe Egberts coffees, and Senso single-serve coffee products. The nature of Sara Lee business line-up changed as a result of its retrenchment plan because the executives of the firm believes that the revenue of Sara Lee will increase up to 12 percent; however, this does not happen, which made the company to engage in the retrenchment of its international household and body care business, producing Kiwi shoe care products, various cleaning products, insecticides and Ambi pur air fresheners. Moreover, the company also outsourced its supply chain efficiencies and its reduced overhead under the name of Project Accelerate (www.saralee.com).

My assessment of the long-term attractiveness of the industries included in the business portfolio of the firm is as follows:

The North American Retail Industry

As the United States is on the top of the world's retail industry, North American retail industry has some solid long-term attractiveness as it is the home of the largest retailers of the world. Mexico and Canada also have their own large chains of retail-stores. This industry has retail companies who are engaged in business with global retailers. Precisely, the North American retail industry can earn the company a great deal of money (retailindustry.about.com).

The North American Fresh Bakery Industry

The bread and bakery industry of North America consists of large establishments who are engaged in production of a number of bakery items. As international baked goods now have more significance than they had in the earlier years, this industry is also full of promising opportunities. The scope of sales for these products is huge at places such as schools, warehouse clubs, institutional outlets and restaurants (www4.agr.gc.ca).

North American Food Service Industry

The North American food service industry is on the ricochet. Since people living in the United States spend a great deal of money for food at restaurants and other places which offer food services, this industry holds a whopping potential for future investments. During the period of 2010, the revenues of all companies operating in this industry increased; however, commodity price inflation has had a noticeable impact on this industry. Overall, in term of long-term attractiveness, ...