Swot Analysis Whole Foods Trader Joe's

The natural and organic food industry are in no doubt the most dynamic and diverse in recent years; traditional supermarket chains such as Kroger Company, Costco, and Wal-Mart have also begun undertaking in the natural and organic food market offering competitive prices (Sonya Bells, Whole Foods Market after Fiscal 2015: the Whole Story, marketrealist.com). However, to me, the two brands that resonate the most in this service sector, at least locally here in Columbus, Ohio are Whole Foods Market, Inc and Trader Joe's.

atties Foods is a true Australian success story. Since opening our doors in 1966, we’ve grown from a small cake shop in regional Victoria into one of the country’s biggest bakeries. Today, Patties Foods proudly employs around 570 people and produces over 300 different sweet and savoury products. Each year our products are proudly sold through grocery and convenience stores as well as foodservice distributors who supply cafes, stadiums, caterers, schools, restaurants, hotels, clubs and even overseas markets.

The brand elements that would be most useful for differentiating the product of Tyson Foods from their competition are memorable, meaningful and transferable brand elements. Utilizing the brand elements of memorable and meaningful will build the brand of Tyson Foods. This brand element will convey a uniform quality, credibility and experience of Tyson Foods (Goodson, 2012). This will add value to the company because Tyson Foods is well known and they are more than just a product and name in the poultry industry. The brand element transferable will help leverage and preserve brand equality against challenges from Tyson Food competitors (Kotler & Keller, 2012). The brand element transferable is a defensive brand element choice criteria. Appropriating the transferable brand element will employ a defensive role in the brand elements. This should maintain the equity of the brand and preserve the brand in the face of various opportunities and constraints (Francis, 2010). This section will provide an elaboration of the brand elements memorable, meaningful and transferable and why using them will differentiate the product of Tyson Foods from their competition.

The first weakness identified is an obvious lack of quality leadership by store and warehouse management. A quick review of a review website for Costco will show a significant number of reviews by current or former employees where they bring up their perceived problems with their managers (Glassdoor). Poor management-employee relationships seem to be a

Whole Foods had dominated the US organic food market until 2015. Other company such as Costco and Walmart which have mass number of products, all began to step a foot into natural organic foods segment at very competitive prices thanks to their nature. The industry has became very competitive.

Trader Joe's is an American supermarket founded in Monrovia, California and owned by a German private equity family trust. Trader Joe's named after its founder, Joe Coulombe. The chain began in 1958 as convenience stores called Pronto Markets. The first store branded as "Trader Joe's" opened in 1967 in Pasadena, California (Wikipedia, Trader Joe’s). Trader Joe’s offered products such as sprouted wheat bread, whole-bean coffees, and black rice which are not always found in any grocery stores. They also focus on selling private label, gourmet, organic, imported food and domestic wines. Trader Joe’s offered private label items with brand names such as Trader Joe’s, Trader Jose, Trader Ming’s, and Trader Giotto. Their 80 percent or more products consists of private label item and they don’t carry any major brands at the store.

In 1980 Whole Foods Market opened its first store. Over the last thirty-five years, Whole Foods has transformed the organic and natural grocery industry. Whole Foods Market’s vision is “to become an international brand synonymous with carrying the highest-quality natural and organic foods available and being the best food retailer in every community in which a whole foods store was located” (Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, & Strickland, 2015, pp.C11). By understanding Whole Foods’ strategies, insightful strategic elements, competition, and future recommendation, it would then be possible to build a better understand of the success of the organizations and the change it has brought to the industry.

Wal-Mart is a large and powerful corporation that uses its retail stores as its primary means of income and profit. The sheer size and influence this company possess on the global marketplace makes it a useful candidate for strategic management analysis. The purpose of this essay is to internally analyze Wal-Mart Corporation using SWOT methods to gain further knowledge about business operations and strategic planning. This essay will investigate the strengths of the company, explore the competitive advantages that this company possesses and finally determine some of the internal weaknesses that Wal-Mart faces.

Whole Foods Market focuses on expansion, primarily through new store openings in existing trade areas as well as new areas, including international locations. During FY2012 and FY2011, the company opened 25 and 18 new stores, respectively. During the 16 weeks ended January 20, 2013, the company opened 10 new stores. Besides, the company is also expanding in the UK.The company opened a 22,000 square feet store in Giffnock, Glasgow in November 2011, and plans to open a 20,000 square feet store in Richmond, London in 2013. Further, the company estimates to open 32–34 stores in FY2013 and 33–38 stores in FY2014. The company 's strategy to grow through identical store sales growth, acquisitions and new store openings has enabled it to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26% during 1991–12. Since the natural foods retailing industry is highly fragmented and comprises many small local and regional chains, growth through store expansion provides the company access to desirable markets, apart from enabling it to expand its reach to a wide customer base and diversify its revenue streams. Strong focus on right sizing of stores Whole Foods Market is focused on the right sized store for each location. During 2008–09 recession, the company downsized 20 leases by an average of 13,000 square feet each. The company reduced approximately 1.4 million

Operations Strategy According to its annual reports, the company’s growth strategy include opening of new stores, acquisitions, and increasing store sales. Whole Foods strives to promote a strong company culture by featuring a team approach to store operations. Whole Foods considers this approach as more empowering to team members than that of the traditional supermarket. Each Whole Foods Market stores generally employs team members who make up approximately 10 self-managed teams per store.

Whole Food Market is one of the most successful organic food grocery chains. Health consciousness among the Americans is increasing day by day, with that Whole Foods supplies organic foods which satisfies their demand and makes it a successful brand (WholeFoodsMarket, 2014). The fiscal year 2013 was the best year for the company as the sales of the company touched 13 billion dollars. Expansion in 10 new markets with 32 new stores shows how the company has been successful. (Wholefoodsmarket, 2013)

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is struggling to stabilize the natural and organic market share among competitors. One of the major problems is their organic product prices are very high for average consumers and they are using the same food distributor in the U.S. According to the Business Insider report, the WFM brand image is no longer attracted to new customers because they can find alternative organic products with cheaper prices in the competitor stores. And also WFM competitors such as Trader Joe’s and Kroger are maintaining their private-label products to make unique organic products and promote their band image.

Using SWOT analysis, it's possible to analyze a case study for identifying points of internal strengths and weaknesses in any given organization, as well as the external opportunities and threats facing this organization (Donohue, Adinolfi and Shrestha, 2009). In this short essay, the SWOT analysis framework is applied to the case about Wendy's International Inc.

The supermarket industry is seeing a shift with more customers opting for “organic” and “fresh” foods over “processed” and “packaged” foods. The grocery stores are now focused on the health of the customers and the environment than pursuing mass-market sales volume and narrow margins. The grocer that is doing an exceptional job is the Whole Foods Market.

The following is the SWOT analysis of Ben & Jerry’s (B & J) a premium American brand of ice cream.