Q1: Describe Dollar General's business strategy. What has the company been so successful? A1: Dollar General's main business strategy is to focus on being the leading distributors of consumable basics, with 30% of the merchandise at $1.00 or less. Dollar General believes in maintaining an assortment of consumable merchandise and making shopping for everyday items hassle free and simplistic. Deriving most of their customer basis from Low, Middle and fixed income earners. With under-serviced rural and urban neighbourhoods being the bench mark of their locations. The company's success can only be derived from its current ability to keep costs to a low, employing minimum staff to operate each store as one point. Another would be stock in general; keeping it at a low price enables more of the item to be sold. Finally Dollar Generals policy's on getting a store ready and opened in 8 days or less. This in term would also generate enough hype and attention to a new stores opening without the means of expensive advertisement. Dollar General keep their stock range fairly basic, only having important consumables, clothing some food items and seasonal and promotional products, this enables them to keep prices of items low with the maximum price of an item found in a Dollar General store being $35.00 The only real Information systems used in each Dollar General store is their satellite link up (space net) and the POS (point of sale) software Triverstiy which enables headquarters with the day's sales information. Stock control is simply done by presuming certain amount of stock is being delivered which of course has a down side as well. In summery Dollar Generals success rate can purely be based on its Target market, keeping ... ... middle of paper ... ...rtain extent but eventually it will not be enough to continue setting up store after store as a means of deriving a profit. Dollar General will need to consider implementing a few more information technology systems in order to keep their current rate of growth and to continue to grow. With better systems they will be able to better track stock whilst on its delivery path, maintain stock control and minimise theft. These few changes would be bound to achieve more profit and get their desired shrink rate down to 1.75% Another thing to consider is a statement made on CNNmoney.com in regards to Dollar Generals consistent store growth that they are only "cannibalizing sales at their other stores and eroding their profits" This is a point that rings very true. Store development is important, but there are other key features that need to be considered for continued growth
On April 4, 2008 Goldman, Sachs & Co. submitted a prepared prospectus for Dollar General Corporation. According to the prospectus, Dollar General is the largest discount retailer in the United States by number of stores. They serve a broad customer base and majority of products are priced at $10 or less and approximately 30% of products are price at $1 or less. They believe that their combination of value and convenience is what has kept them ahead of their competitors since opening in 1955. Dollar General has had substantial growth in recent years, growing their number of stores from 5,540 as of February 1, 2002 to 8,229 as of February 2, 2007. This growth encouraged Richard Dreiling,
Bass Pro shop started as an 8-foot-long display area in the back of a liquor store in 1971 and has expanded into a Fortune 500 company that employs over 8,800 employees and has annual sales estimating somewhere around $1.25 billion today. The question at hand is: should Bass Pro Shops continue to expand, and if so at what rate should they? The primary problems they might face when expanding are as follows. Could expansion hurt their brand image and if so how? The Competition outside of Missouri is going to be much greater. They will not have the publicity and brand recognition as they do in Missouri. Does Bass Pro have the financial resources in order to open new stores, if not then what are some options they can exercise? Will Negative publicity threaten their brand image as they continue to grow? Is the cost of overhead going to be too high initially for Bass Pro to expand at a fast rate, if so then at what rate should they expand yearly? These are all problems Bass Pro is going to have to face in the future. Through research and extensive problem solving, they will be able to make an accurate decision on rather they should expand.
As seen in Exhibit F, Best Buy has 1,055 main locations that consist of their standard large format stores, and 406 Best Buy Mobile locations that focus on mobile device sales. To supply these locations, Best Buy has 23 distribution centers located throughout the country. Comparatively, Wal-Mart has 4,625 stores stocked by 158 strategically located distribution centers. This puts Wal-Mart at a huge advantage in a couple of ways. Not only is Wal-Mart much more likely to have a store nearby any given customer, they are also better equipped to keep its products in stock at all times. This means more customers visit, and due to stocking, more customers can make the purchase they want. On an international level, Wal-Mart also exceeds Best Buy’s few hundred stores with 6,308 stores in over 11 countries. This furthers Wal-Mart’s availability to customers and puts them at an advantage over Best Buy. Additionally, the increased scale of Wal-Mart’s retail and distributive operations make them extremely competitive on pricing, a major aspect of purchase decisions for high-ticket items like consumer electronics.
Retail Pharmacy Growth Strategy: CVS has managed to grow considerably in the past few years with the help of acquisition of beneficial companies and integrated the operations of these companies by creating synergy to drive higher margin and greater economies of scope. CVS is building more and more pharmacy stores in convenient locations. Another strategy that CVS has adopted during 2008-2010 is to move freestanding locations for all their pharmacy stores. This helps the company to provide more convenience to customers and have more square-footage per store in order to add new services such as Minute-Clinic and drive-thru services.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the effectiveness of the Target Stores supply chain. Target was founded in 1902 by George Draper Dayton who after partnering with the owner of Goodfellow Dry Goods Company for a year decided he wanted to have more involvement, so he purchased Goodfellows renaming it Dayton Dry Goods Company. After purchasing the store Mr. Dayton remained in management until the time of his death in 1938. By this time the store had seen many changes including a name change in 1911 changing from Dayton Dry Goods Company to The Dayton Company, as well as an addition of the Dayton Foundation in 1918. After Mr. Dayton’s death the family continued managing the business until 1983 in which the last two managing Dayton’s retired, ending 80 years of the Dayton’s family management (Target Corporation, 2014).
Wal-Mart’s competitive environment is quite unique. Although Wal-Mart’s primary competition comes from general merchandise retailers, warehouse clubs and supermarket retailers also present competitive pressure. The discount retail industry is substantial in size and is constantly experiencing growth and change. The top competitors compete both nationally and internationally. There is extensive competition on pricing, location, store size, layout and environment, merchandise mix, technology and innovation, and overall image. The market is definitely characterized by economies of scale. Top retailers vertically integrate many functions, such as purchasing, manufacturing, advertising, and shipping. Large scale functions such as these give the top competitors a significant cost advantage over small-scale competition.
Setting prices too high would discourage purchasing and setting prices too low negatively affects revenue. While several pricing strategies exist, the use of a value-based pricing system, as implemented at Cabela’s, offers an optimal strategy that meet both customer expectations and company requirements.
Some core competencies that must be exploited are: Brand Kmart is an existing well-known and trusted national brand in USA Kmart has private label and designer clothing that is well endorsed Infrastructure Kmart has a large number of well-located, low-cost, leased stores in urban far away from competitors through out the country ( Appendix B ). Staffing Confidence by the market in Kmart is created by the achievements of its staff and management. With the turn-around strategy in place, new blood has been put into the top management structures. In any renewal there will be retrenchment as unprofitable stores are closed. This can be used as an opportunity to retain and move high performing staff to where they are needed and to get rid of non-performing staff. Anderson the chairperson of Kmart is well supported by Wall Street and the board of Directors. These new staff members enter the company with needed skills to address problems in certain areas that previously were poorly managed such as inventory control and merchandising. Store locations, layout and Performance Stores conveniently located away from competitors like Wal-mart and Target therefore less to compete for customers face-to-face. There are 250 non-performing stores who have already been identified as being more cost effective to close than continue with running costs. Expertise exists in-house for the planning of store layout and appearance to meet different customer segments. This concentration of effort will enable focus on key areas Technology Kmart has already invested in good retailing systems. The system can be use to control inventory, supplier payments, track customer buying and monitor income versus profit margins across all stores. Research and Development The planning department is well established and in cross-functional to provide various perspective. The planning department to ensure that strategies at all levels are executed can further use the access to past data and knowledge of changes in buying patterns. Financial Backing JP Morgan Chase has agreed to support Kmart to avert the current threat of closure due to bankruptcy.
Customer loyalty is another competitive advantage. Trader Joe’s doesn’t provide membership card to the customer, however customer still would like to choose Trader Joe’s just because of this
... and each division to have a different manger to work both for his store and for the company. They can increase there overseas branches by having a different strategic plans. They can even divide the products into different categories such as very high or low end products. Need to use new technologies with different approaches so that can ready to use new technologies with in a short span of time. The main generic strategy is to have over all cost leadership by which the Wal-Mart can control the cost. The supply and distribution system has to be more effective in present one so that they can save both time and money while doing distribution of there products from ware house to the stores.
Currently, Nicholson’s financial history boasts a 2% increase in profit annually but this percentage is way below the industry average of 6%. Cooper management proposed that if Nicholson stops selling to every market, increased efficiencies would result and cut cost of goods sold from 69% of sales to 65%. It was also suggested that the acquisition could lower selling, general, and administrative expenses from 22% of sales to 19%.
Historically, Dollar General operated in a highly price sensitive market segment, with 55% of its consumer base earning an average annual gross income of less than $40,000.[2] To attract these customers, Dollar General employed an Everyday Low Price strategy similar to Wal-Mart’s. Thus, keeping costs low and driving high traffic volumes were critical to the company’s financial success. Dollar General achieved this strategy in several ways, including keeping rents and labor costs low, locating in low-income, high traffic areas that offered consumers few substitutes, and offering a wide variety of popular CPG and white label goods.
Walmart is one the biggest companies in the world. In 2012, Walmart regained the No. 1 spot for fortune magazine’s list of 500 American companies’ ranked by revenue. This is no small feat with sales being over 400 billion dollars in 2012 alone. The United States in 2012 only accounted for 62% of the net profits of Walmart making a multinational enterprise. In the business world there are multiple types of performance measures that can be applied to Walmart showing how large this multinational enterprise truly is and the quality it provides. Walmart is able to maximize customer savings and its profit margins by controlling its supply chain by focusing on key aspects. Walmart’s operation’s strategy is the key to their success and must be understood before their performance can be measured as well as how their supply chain effects that performance.
Wal-Mart is coming off a disappointing third quarter when its largest revenue generator, sales from U.S. stores, dropped 0.3%. The company also has forecasted flat earnings during the critically important holiday season. While lowering its full-year forecast, Wal-Mart still expects to see modest sales growth in FY2015 through the opening of smaller, more targeted stores, and its longtime strategy of lowering prices. However, there is some doubt whether these measures will be enough to stave off Wal-Mart 's competitors. Costco NASDAQ: COST is coming off a big year with more than $100 billion in revenue, 5% growth in U.S. store sales, and 7% growth in international sales. As Costco continues to challenge Wal-Mart domestically and internationally,
For example, in cities like Los Angeles, Houston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco I would make all stores bigger and widen the selection. Most people like myself go to 7-Eleven if they are either on the road or just need something quick. If I was a key exec, I would want us to be more than that. I would try to tap into the demographic that goes to Walgreens and Rite Aid and become even more of a convenience store. I would introduce new products that become synonymous with our brand in the mold of the 7-Eleven