Work as per the comments in brackets
Introduction
The primary aim of this article is to study some cases pertaining to marketing management. By means of the cases of two corporate organizations, we will try to decipher why companies need sustainable competitive strategies and advantages to survive in the tight markets. We will analyze the case studies on the basis of factors such as market intelligence, market segmentation, target marketing, and a few more (explain/mention them).
Let us try and understand the concept of marketing and various factors that influence its impact. Marketing is defined as organizational function as well as a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers (reference?). The lifecycle of marketing in an organization aims at not only achieving the tasks above, but also for managing customer relationships in a way that it benefits the organization, it’s stakeholders, and it’s customers at large.
The marketing is comprised of four Ps that are very prominent in its functioning – people, processes, programs, and performance. The core concepts of marketing are based on needs, wants, demands, target markets, positioning, market segmentation, offerings, brands, value and satisfaction, marketing channels, and marketing environment (reference?). While it is lengthy to discuss all these concepts all at once, we can do a quality analysis of two cases based on three of the above concepts, including XXX (mention them).
Case 1. Name of the company/product?
It is very interesting to study the case of the brand Zara founded by Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Merain 1975. Zara reported sales of US$20.7 billion in the year 2012 (old data…), with a powerful 66 percent stake of its parent company Inditex’s total sales. What is the secret to Zara’s competitive advantage? It is its supply chain, operational processes, and competitive business strategies. Zara has adopted the strategy of growth through diversification and vertical integrations. It is customary for shoppers to see merchandize that they have seen just a couple weeks ago on a catwalk, to be displayed in a Zara outlet in no time (He, 2012). Regular merchandize companies take about 6 months to conceive a design and bring it into the retail market post production time. On the other hand, Zara takes just two weeks right from conceptualization stage to production to the retail stage. Zara uses a system of Just In Time (JIT) (Source?) production to deliver fashionable and trendy merchandize by controlling and integrating processes. The brand literally, embodies the idea of ‘fast fashion’ in the most effective way. The smart move that Zara has made to enable faster turnaround time is making sure that it reserves 85 percent of its capacity for in-season adjustments. This allows the organization to be flexible in terms of amount, frequency, and the variety of new products launched.
Another strategy that Zara uses to effectively deliver ‘fast fashion’ is committing six months in advance to only 15 to 20 percent of the season output. So this essentially means that only 50 percent of its cloths are designed and manufactured in the middle of the season. This business strategy in turn, gives births to other advantages and positive cascading effects on the business. For example, Zara earns 80% of the full price on its cloths, whereas, the industry average is 60-70%. The organization does not have to put out a big chunk of its season’s production on discounted markup price, leading to higher profitability. Zara successfully uses a combination of the agile and lean supply chain models to effectively streamline its production and delivery systems. By producing goods every two weeks, Zara also creates an artificial impression of dearth or shortage. As the laws of the economics state, shortage in supply leads to direct rise in demand. (https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/zara-supply-chain-its-secret-to-retail-success)
You could conclude this section by mentioning the strategies that Zara is using related to the theory you learned in class…
Case 2. Name
Wal-mart Stores, Inc, is the world’s largest retailer with sales of $466 billion in the year 2012 (old reference). Walmart employs more than 2.1 million people from 9,230 retail units under 60 different segments in several countries and continents (use authors surname and year and put the website in the reference list) (http://www.ecommerce-digest.com/wal-mart-case-study.html). Walmart employs four parts into its corporate strategy – Dominance in the retail market, expansion in the US and International Markets, creation of positive brand and company recognition, and branch out into new segments. Many of these strategies have been thoroughly dissected by the critics for being thoroughly encroaching and not in the favor of the well-being of the common public (explain why/reasons in more detail, because of its importance…use additional references for this).
The first strategy of dominating the retail market everywhere that company founder Sam Walton (put the founder at the beginning of the case study) put in place has worked wonders in making the company’s presence felt everywhere. Since Walmart is primarily a discount retailer, they try to sell their products at the lowest possible prices at any given time of the year. This strategy allows the company to enter new markets and overthrow competitors in the new markets as discounted prices of products supersede any other strategy for gaining new customers.
The next strategy of Walmart is to expand far and wide in the US as well as internationally. Currently, the organization employs over 1 million employees in the US alone. It owns over 4,000 stores worldwide, with over 1,200 stores in operation internationally. It is also the largest US retailer, gaining 100 million customers weekly in all 50 states.
Walmart takes several efforts to create a positive brand name and name recognition with a goal of having the customer associated with the retailer for the most competitive prices. It uses the means of effective advertising with television advertising campaigns and newspaper adverts (any references?).
Walmart constantly strives to reinvent its strategy by branching out into new segments of retailing. Walmart, in recent times, has majorly got into pharmacy, automotive repair shop, and is now moving into grocery sales. (Hayden Patrick, Lee Seung, McMahon Kate, Pereira, Mike, 2002).
Conclusion
The common factors used by Zara and Walmart is its size, financial power, immense resources to take over the markets. The sheer power and size of these companies allows them to ruthlessly progress into new markets and not just sustain, but to continually thrive for decades.
More should be stated about type of strategies, implications and results…Do a summary of the report and add some of your personal views about these case studies.
References (Draft)
- He, Ning, 2012, How to Maintain Sustainable Competitive Advantage – Case Study on the Evolution of Organizational Strategic Management. School of Economics and management, Xi’an University of Post.
- Dai, Lin, 2016, Case Study on Gaining Competitive Advantage through Building Learning Organization in Small Businesses of Service Sector in China, National College of Ireland.
- Authors surname: https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/zara-supply-chain-its-secret-to-retail-success
- Hayden Patrick, Lee Seung, McMahon Kate, Pereira, Mike, 2002, Wal-Mart: Staying on Top of the Fortune 500.
- http://www.ecommerce-digest.com/wal-mart-case-study.html
You are using we, let us try…try to use third person. The report will look at, explain. Or It will be analyzed…
Try to update some numbers with additional references from industry or internal reports, or newspaper articles…
I am not sure if wall mark case study is a journal article. I am afraid not. Try to find in the SCU library a journal article about this company. You need to use academic journal articles about these two case studies and complement the information with other sources…Make sure this is like this, because if not, you cannot pass.
Reference list in Harvard style, Please.
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