Introduction
This study depicts about the business strategies of the company and their significance toward the business. Two different models are very essential for the company to expand their business. The industrial organization focuses the external model while the resource-based organization focuses the internal environment. In order to expand the business, the company must give priorities to these models appropriately either internal or external. For examining the internal and external model analysis, the SWOT analysis is considered as they help to figure out the internal and external environment depicting strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the firm. In this study, Coles Company in Australia is assumed as the case for examining the business strategies, strategic management, and competitiveness. The company executes several activities for external and internal environments targeting the business and organizational levels. The priorities of the firm are well identified in the study and utilized for recommendation of the business expansion.
This study depicts about the business strategies of the company and their significance toward the business. Two different models are very essential for the company to expand their business. The industrial organization focuses the external model while the resource-based organization focuses the internal environment. In order to expand the business, the company must give priorities to these models appropriately either internal or external. For examining the internal and external model analysis, the SWOT analysis is considered as they help to figure out the internal and external environment depicting strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the firm. In this study, Coles Company in Australia is assumed as the case for examining the business strategies, strategic management, and competitiveness. The company executes several activities for external and internal environments targeting the business and organizational levels. The priorities of the firm are well identified in the study and utilized for recommendation of the business expansion.
Company Overview
The Coles Group is a retail industry that belongs to the Wesfarmers Limited. The firm operates in the sectors associated to the retail and departmental stores. The target audiences include the middle class and premium household people in Australia. The Coles retail store assists in fulfilment of the daily requirements. The company consists of employees around 150,000. The company Coles Myer Limited comprises of several number of stores around more than 1,500 with selling area. It occupied various products for sales and stores to sell wide varied products. The company entered the market of food retailing after 1950 that driven the company to expand. In the first year, the company earned net profit over 30.7 percent with annual sales above 83 million euro.
The company’s entry into the food, beverage, and liquor market is favourable as their entry lead to improve the condition of the company. The firm executes several strategic inputs to the company that will further analyze about the implementation of the strategic actions (Andersson, 2006). This company grows well with their business strategic management and strategic competitiveness as it aligns the actions with the environment of the business irrespective of the internal and external focused models. The company had been involved in developing various standards and policies to improve the business level strategies. The externally focused model helps to align the company as per industrial organization and the internally focused model supports aligning the industry as per resources. Coles Company has implemented both external and internal models as required and adopted priorities appropriately to influence the business expansion. The organization usually relies on the environments (Carpenter, 2009).
Strategic Management
The strategic management of the firm is mandatory as they support in the development of the business in the market. Most of the firms are developing by their continuous strategic efforts. Several strategic inputs are implemented from the end of the company. Coles concentrated on the growth strategy by various ways such as planning on better delivery for the stores, great focus upon food retailing, simplification of the supply chain with their operations, expansion of new paths to different services including the liquor business. The growth strategies are mainly responsible for the growth of the firm as they can accelerate the sales by increasing space for growth, supports driving growth in new channels in business, develop the leadership values of the firm, enhance the operations associated with the supply chain and stores, differentiation of new growth channels, and much more. These activities are taken by the firm to develop their business with new channels. Most of the companies lack the new channel expansion, as they will not follow any plans (Allen, 2001).
Coles had adopted all the plans to enhance their business. It invested with the suppliers for securing quality at low price. The firm targeted fresh vegetables and fruits for their business. It implemented the brand as alternative value to the customers. The company conducted loyalty program to attract the customers and extracted insights for analysing the market interests. It included the localized marketing in addition to other marketing methodologies. It followed the recent trend of sales through online modes. In order to improve the reach among the customers and audiences, it adopted new technology for channel expansion. It managed the liquor business by appropriately identifying the issues involved in the business including inferior store networks, poor layouts, inefficient supply chains, and less online proposition. It plans to transform the shape of liquor business concentrating on offers and investments in acquiring new places. Coles attentively targeted on both external and internal environments and efficiently executed the business with appropriate strategic actions and prioritization of the actions toward environments. Environmental models include both external and internal. External environment relates the organization with the outward projections such as market growth, business expansion, and channels. Internal environment relates the organization with the resources. The environmental analysis for the company identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Baltzan, 2010).
Environmental analysis figures out the problems of the company in terms of internal and external assets. Strengths and weaknesses remain the part of the internal environment while opportunities and threats remain the part of the external environment. By performing appropriate analysis, the company figures out the actions for goal setting. New strategies are followed by evaluating the environmental operations with certain goals and strategies. It better plans for effective strategy for growth of the business after getting clear insights upon the strengths and weaknesses. During this analysis of the environments, it is possible for identifying strengths, weaknesses, growth of opportunities, identification of threats and plans to reduce the threats for remediation. This analysis figures out trends, competitions, and market dynamics for business expansions. The metrics and insights assessed from the company evaluate the performance, satisfaction, costs of maintenance, and same factors. Early threat identification prevents the firm to avoid risks that may influence the business (Berman, 2015).
Internal Environmental Analysis
The internal environment of the company includes the management of the resources, stability of the workforces, proprietary systems, ownership or administration, and property rights. The strengths and weaknesses of the company need analysis to interpret the organization about the areas to strengthen for the strategic actions. The other weaknesses of the firm are determined.
Strengths
The strengths of the company may include the organization of the resources within the firm, property ownership, and proprietary systems. The following strengths are present in the Coles firm:
• The supermarkets of Coles provide the share of the food and liquor market for various customers
• The firm adopts different method of advertisements with brands such as adoption of the patriotic slogans to target buyers
• The pricing strategies as followed by the firm are very attractive and promotional offers regularly as required
• Conducted several campaigns for promotions with conjunction in Apple and other suppliers
• Distinct brands intend to cater to the corresponding buyers
• All the purchases are facilitated through the online services comprising the orders and delivery of the orders
• All employees are well treated within the firm as they have more than 800 stores and even employs 100,000 people (Chew, 2008)
• The company serves the best in Australia into the market segment of retailing
• Delivering cost saving products and services to the customers
• Involve in CSR activities
• Business is very friendly in terms of sustainability and environmental
Weaknesses
The weaknesses in the firm are needed to track as they highlight all the issues, problems in the firm, which eventually influence the business. For instance, the company may have negative points, which may lead to reduce the customer preferences toward the services.
Coles firm consists of the following weaknesses:
• The company works on low margins as compared to the other competitors that influence the business and internal environment. However, the business gets affected since this being a weakness.
• The public sentiment from the target audiences toward the company is affected by the negative publicity that surrounds hard-line negotiation with suppliers at Australia
• Persistent problems exist from the supplier end
• Issues are present with the management
The analysis of the internal environment provides the fact that identifies the strengths for the business appropriately. The business expansion usually is enhanced by actions like good pricing strategies, promotions, and online mode of service delivery. However, weaknesses imply about the issues.
External Environmental Analysis
The external environment consists of the external factors of the company such as new market opportunities, trade agreements, threats, and all other factors influencing the external company. The external environment of the company includes the creation of the new-market, alliances, market opportunities, conflicts, and natural disasters (Helms, 2010).
Opportunities
The company exhibits the following opportunities:
• It seizes the control of the supply chain and filtered the production with profits at different points
• The expansion of the business in multiple locations either locally or globally lead to reach target customers
• The adoption of the advertising strategies and marketing exercises had wide impacts over the business growth
• The gaining of the multiple channels in the retail such as food, liquor had resulted to improve the business
• Label strategy is made private
• New opportunities are created in the liquor markets
• Continuous scanning on new markets to pull the business into various channelized markets
• Opportunities in insurance and finance sectors to promote more
The company exhibit some opportunities that drive the business to move forward with lot of profits and revenue to the company. These multiple channelized markets promote various pathways for business.
Threats
Threats are the risks, which affect the business that may even result to closure if the impacts are severe. The threats in the business need to assess regularly as it affects the external environment of the business in major part. Few threats to the business are listed as follows:
• Increase in the supermarket and retailing companies had driven to low price margins
• Generic brands continuously affect the business since they do not have idea and communication for each brand
• Low conveniences to the customers that had lead them to look for independent retailers and smaller retailers
• New entrants in the liquor business emerge as competitors with unique business models and ideas
• Regulations including legal and politics arise as threats to the business
These threats exist in the company Coles and require appropriate planning of the activities to reduce these threats or mitigate risks without affecting the business.
Strategic Actions
The strategic actions are the activities that are taken by the firm to resolve the problems in the business environments either internally or externally. As per the analysis, it is evident that the company experience vast enhancements in the business. However, the firm requires certain actions to reduce the problems associated with the external environment. The internal environment does not have any issues as they indicate the strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses require attention (Lynch, 2015).
In order to reduce the threats in the business, the company prefers and prioritizes the external environmental model at the first and the internal environmental model as the second. The external environment affects the business more than that of the internal environment. Both the environments execute the business of the firm such that the internal environment only deals with the resources, activities within the firm that have fewer impacts over the business. In other hand, the external environment deals with the threats that have wider impacts over the business.
Coles Group took appropriate actions in their market to overcome threats in the business. The online sales and retailing had driven the customers to facilitate sales. Goals and strategies for the environments are considered that enhance market growth, expansion of the business, and channels. Based on the trends, market dynamics, company requires changes in their approach. Metrics and insights obtained from the assessments evaluate satisfaction, performance, and maintenance.
Conclusion
Thus, the company Coles prioritizes the external environmental model as the preferred one as their business gets influenced due to external factors rather than internal factors. The company took various strategic activities and driven the business to the better level as compared to the other competitors. The company identified all the threats or risks that include below the external environment. However, there are no risks in the internal environment. In this study, SWOT analysis of the company Coles had lead to trace the strategic action of the company to maximize the business. The business expansion of the company is the result of the priority to the external environment.
References
Allen, E. a. F. J., 2001. E-commerce marketing strategies: an integrated framework and case analysis.. Logistics Information Management, 14(1/2), pp. 14-23.
Andersson, S. a. E., 2006. The entrepreneur in the born global firm in Australia and Sweden. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 13(4), pp. 642-659.
Baltzan, P., 2010. Business driven information systems. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Berman, B., 2015. How to compete effectively against low-cost competitors. Business Horizons, pp. 87-97.
Bolton, R. S. V. a. M. D., 2010. Recent trends and emerging practices in retailer pricing. Retailing in the 21st Century, pp. 301-318.
Carpenter, M. a. S. G., 2009. Strategic Management Concepts. 2nd ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Chew, J. a. C. C., 2008. Human resource practices, organizational commitment and intention to stay. International journal of manpower, 29(6), pp. 503-522.
Helms, M. a. N. J., 2010. Exploring SWOT analysis–where are we now? A review of academic research from the last decade.. Journal of strategy and management, 3(3), pp. 215-251.
Lynch, R., 2015. Strategic Management. London: Financial Times Press.
The Coles Group is a retail industry that belongs to the Wesfarmers Limited. The firm operates in the sectors associated to the retail and departmental stores. The target audiences include the middle class and premium household people in Australia. The Coles retail store assists in fulfilment of the daily requirements. The company consists of employees around 150,000. The company Coles Myer Limited comprises of several number of stores around more than 1,500 with selling area. It occupied various products for sales and stores to sell wide varied products. The company entered the market of food retailing after 1950 that driven the company to expand. In the first year, the company earned net profit over 30.7 percent with annual sales above 83 million euro.
The company’s entry into the food, beverage, and liquor market is favourable as their entry lead to improve the condition of the company. The firm executes several strategic inputs to the company that will further analyze about the implementation of the strategic actions (Andersson, 2006). This company grows well with their business strategic management and strategic competitiveness as it aligns the actions with the environment of the business irrespective of the internal and external focused models. The company had been involved in developing various standards and policies to improve the business level strategies. The externally focused model helps to align the company as per industrial organization and the internally focused model supports aligning the industry as per resources. Coles Company has implemented both external and internal models as required and adopted priorities appropriately to influence the business expansion. The organization usually relies on the environments (Carpenter, 2009).
Strategic Management
The strategic management of the firm is mandatory as they support in the development of the business in the market. Most of the firms are developing by their continuous strategic efforts. Several strategic inputs are implemented from the end of the company. Coles concentrated on the growth strategy by various ways such as planning on better delivery for the stores, great focus upon food retailing, simplification of the supply chain with their operations, expansion of new paths to different services including the liquor business. The growth strategies are mainly responsible for the growth of the firm as they can accelerate the sales by increasing space for growth, supports driving growth in new channels in business, develop the leadership values of the firm, enhance the operations associated with the supply chain and stores, differentiation of new growth channels, and much more. These activities are taken by the firm to develop their business with new channels. Most of the companies lack the new channel expansion, as they will not follow any plans (Allen, 2001).
Coles had adopted all the plans to enhance their business. It invested with the suppliers for securing quality at low price. The firm targeted fresh vegetables and fruits for their business. It implemented the brand as alternative value to the customers. The company conducted loyalty program to attract the customers and extracted insights for analysing the market interests. It included the localized marketing in addition to other marketing methodologies. It followed the recent trend of sales through online modes. In order to improve the reach among the customers and audiences, it adopted new technology for channel expansion. It managed the liquor business by appropriately identifying the issues involved in the business including inferior store networks, poor layouts, inefficient supply chains, and less online proposition. It plans to transform the shape of liquor business concentrating on offers and investments in acquiring new places. Coles attentively targeted on both external and internal environments and efficiently executed the business with appropriate strategic actions and prioritization of the actions toward environments. Environmental models include both external and internal. External environment relates the organization with the outward projections such as market growth, business expansion, and channels. Internal environment relates the organization with the resources. The environmental analysis for the company identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Baltzan, 2010).
Environmental analysis figures out the problems of the company in terms of internal and external assets. Strengths and weaknesses remain the part of the internal environment while opportunities and threats remain the part of the external environment. By performing appropriate analysis, the company figures out the actions for goal setting. New strategies are followed by evaluating the environmental operations with certain goals and strategies. It better plans for effective strategy for growth of the business after getting clear insights upon the strengths and weaknesses. During this analysis of the environments, it is possible for identifying strengths, weaknesses, growth of opportunities, identification of threats and plans to reduce the threats for remediation. This analysis figures out trends, competitions, and market dynamics for business expansions. The metrics and insights assessed from the company evaluate the performance, satisfaction, costs of maintenance, and same factors. Early threat identification prevents the firm to avoid risks that may influence the business (Berman, 2015).
Internal Environmental Analysis
The internal environment of the company includes the management of the resources, stability of the workforces, proprietary systems, ownership or administration, and property rights. The strengths and weaknesses of the company need analysis to interpret the organization about the areas to strengthen for the strategic actions. The other weaknesses of the firm are determined.
Strengths
The strengths of the company may include the organization of the resources within the firm, property ownership, and proprietary systems. The following strengths are present in the Coles firm:
• The supermarkets of Coles provide the share of the food and liquor market for various customers
• The firm adopts different method of advertisements with brands such as adoption of the patriotic slogans to target buyers
• The pricing strategies as followed by the firm are very attractive and promotional offers regularly as required
• Conducted several campaigns for promotions with conjunction in Apple and other suppliers
• Distinct brands intend to cater to the corresponding buyers
• All the purchases are facilitated through the online services comprising the orders and delivery of the orders
• All employees are well treated within the firm as they have more than 800 stores and even employs 100,000 people (Chew, 2008)
• The company serves the best in Australia into the market segment of retailing
• Delivering cost saving products and services to the customers
• Involve in CSR activities
• Business is very friendly in terms of sustainability and environmental
Weaknesses
The weaknesses in the firm are needed to track as they highlight all the issues, problems in the firm, which eventually influence the business. For instance, the company may have negative points, which may lead to reduce the customer preferences toward the services.
Coles firm consists of the following weaknesses:
• The company works on low margins as compared to the other competitors that influence the business and internal environment. However, the business gets affected since this being a weakness.
• The public sentiment from the target audiences toward the company is affected by the negative publicity that surrounds hard-line negotiation with suppliers at Australia
• Persistent problems exist from the supplier end
• Issues are present with the management
The analysis of the internal environment provides the fact that identifies the strengths for the business appropriately. The business expansion usually is enhanced by actions like good pricing strategies, promotions, and online mode of service delivery. However, weaknesses imply about the issues.
External Environmental Analysis
The external environment consists of the external factors of the company such as new market opportunities, trade agreements, threats, and all other factors influencing the external company. The external environment of the company includes the creation of the new-market, alliances, market opportunities, conflicts, and natural disasters (Helms, 2010).
Opportunities
The company exhibits the following opportunities:
• It seizes the control of the supply chain and filtered the production with profits at different points
• The expansion of the business in multiple locations either locally or globally lead to reach target customers
• The adoption of the advertising strategies and marketing exercises had wide impacts over the business growth
• The gaining of the multiple channels in the retail such as food, liquor had resulted to improve the business
• Label strategy is made private
• New opportunities are created in the liquor markets
• Continuous scanning on new markets to pull the business into various channelized markets
• Opportunities in insurance and finance sectors to promote more
The company exhibit some opportunities that drive the business to move forward with lot of profits and revenue to the company. These multiple channelized markets promote various pathways for business.
Threats
Threats are the risks, which affect the business that may even result to closure if the impacts are severe. The threats in the business need to assess regularly as it affects the external environment of the business in major part. Few threats to the business are listed as follows:
• Increase in the supermarket and retailing companies had driven to low price margins
• Generic brands continuously affect the business since they do not have idea and communication for each brand
• Low conveniences to the customers that had lead them to look for independent retailers and smaller retailers
• New entrants in the liquor business emerge as competitors with unique business models and ideas
• Regulations including legal and politics arise as threats to the business
These threats exist in the company Coles and require appropriate planning of the activities to reduce these threats or mitigate risks without affecting the business.
Strategic Actions
The strategic actions are the activities that are taken by the firm to resolve the problems in the business environments either internally or externally. As per the analysis, it is evident that the company experience vast enhancements in the business. However, the firm requires certain actions to reduce the problems associated with the external environment. The internal environment does not have any issues as they indicate the strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses require attention (Lynch, 2015).
In order to reduce the threats in the business, the company prefers and prioritizes the external environmental model at the first and the internal environmental model as the second. The external environment affects the business more than that of the internal environment. Both the environments execute the business of the firm such that the internal environment only deals with the resources, activities within the firm that have fewer impacts over the business. In other hand, the external environment deals with the threats that have wider impacts over the business.
Coles Group took appropriate actions in their market to overcome threats in the business. The online sales and retailing had driven the customers to facilitate sales. Goals and strategies for the environments are considered that enhance market growth, expansion of the business, and channels. Based on the trends, market dynamics, company requires changes in their approach. Metrics and insights obtained from the assessments evaluate satisfaction, performance, and maintenance.
Conclusion
Thus, the company Coles prioritizes the external environmental model as the preferred one as their business gets influenced due to external factors rather than internal factors. The company took various strategic activities and driven the business to the better level as compared to the other competitors. The company identified all the threats or risks that include below the external environment. However, there are no risks in the internal environment. In this study, SWOT analysis of the company Coles had lead to trace the strategic action of the company to maximize the business. The business expansion of the company is the result of the priority to the external environment.
References
Allen, E. a. F. J., 2001. E-commerce marketing strategies: an integrated framework and case analysis.. Logistics Information Management, 14(1/2), pp. 14-23.
Andersson, S. a. E., 2006. The entrepreneur in the born global firm in Australia and Sweden. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 13(4), pp. 642-659.
Baltzan, P., 2010. Business driven information systems. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Berman, B., 2015. How to compete effectively against low-cost competitors. Business Horizons, pp. 87-97.
Bolton, R. S. V. a. M. D., 2010. Recent trends and emerging practices in retailer pricing. Retailing in the 21st Century, pp. 301-318.
Carpenter, M. a. S. G., 2009. Strategic Management Concepts. 2nd ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Chew, J. a. C. C., 2008. Human resource practices, organizational commitment and intention to stay. International journal of manpower, 29(6), pp. 503-522.
Helms, M. a. N. J., 2010. Exploring SWOT analysis–where are we now? A review of academic research from the last decade.. Journal of strategy and management, 3(3), pp. 215-251.
Lynch, R., 2015. Strategic Management. London: Financial Times Press.