STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Strategic Management- Retail Trade Industry



Table of Contents

Task A: Evaluation of the retail trade industry environment3

One dominant economic feature of the retail trade industry:3

Retail trade industry profitability and impact of external competition:3

Proposed plan to for the retail trade industry to deal with external competition:5

Two significant differentiating competitive characteristics of retail trade industry:6

1.Capital Intensity:6

2.Technology & systems:7

Strategic Group Map:8

Evaluation of two key factors that will impact the chocolate retail trade company's success:9

Internal & External basis of competition:9

Barriers to entry:10

The impact that each of the five types of competitive forces will have on competition in retail trade industry (Chocolate retail):11

Task B: Developing a strategic plan (Chocolate Retail Store)13

Vision Statement:13

Mission Statement:13

How to capitalize on a significant market opportunity:14

One external Threat:15

Proposed business-level financial objective:16

Proposed functional-level strategic objective:17

How to measure achievement of the objective:18

Strategy for achieving the objective:18

Task C: How the chocolate retail company's strategic plan would be executed?18

Using the principal managerial components in the strategy execution process:18

Actions that would be taken to closely align the entire chocolate retail company's efforts to the company's mission:20

Analysis of the application two theories of motivation:21

Organizational considerations for structuring the work effort to successfully execute the strategic plan:23

Current and emerging organizational characteristics:24

References26

Strategic Management- Retail Trade Industry

Task A: Evaluation of the retail trade industry environment

Industry operators retail specialized lines of goods, such as cigars and cigarettes, paper goods, art supplies, collectors' items, religious merchandise fireworks, and trophies. This industry moreover includes general merchandise auction houses, but it does not include department stores, mass merchandisers, superstores and warehouse clubs.

One dominant economic feature of the retail trade industry:

The one dominant economic feature of the retail trade industry is the external competition in the industry as many of the products retailed by the Small Specialty Retail Stores industry can also be purchased from mainstream operators such as department stores. In particular, discount department stores like Walmart offer price-competitive goods. Therefore, the success of department stores and discount department stores hinders demand for small specialty retailers. This driver is expected to increase over 2012.

Retail trade industry profitability and impact of external competition:

This industry retails specialized lines of goods, with operators offering a wide and differing range of products. Thus, broad changes in consumer sentiment and spending patterns, rather than product-specific trends, drive the performance of the Small Specialty Retail Stores industry. Since the recession, consumers have curtailed discretionary spending, driving down sales of most industry products. In addition, increasing competition from mass merchandisers, warehouse clubs, discount department stores and online retailers has further eroded industry sales. Consequently, revenue is expected to decline at an average annual rate of 3.6% over the five years to 2012, to total $24.7 billion. Despite such poor industry-wide performance, sales of tobacco have remained resilient throughout the years due to tobacco's function as a stress reliever, mitigating some of the industry's losses.

Over the past five years, declining household wealth, rising unemployment rates and uncertain economic conditions lowered the disposable income level of most US households. Following the collapse of the housing market, consumer confidence crashed (as much as ...