...Dollar Tree is the nation’s largest single price point retail with over 3300 stores across the United States. It has faced several issues that have led to organizational and leadership problems. 1. What are the chief elements of the strategy that “Dollar Tree” is pursuing? The chief elements important in this article are all related to the fact that the company was moving towards expanding the business and creating a competitive advantage. As the article says, the business grows so much that by 2009, there were over 33000 retail stores and 12 distribution centers. The chief elements are as follow: - To enter new geographic markets. - To gain sales and market share with lower costs. - Adhering to policies and procedures and making changes when needed. 2. What are the elements of “Dollar Tree” ’s Business Model? There are 2 elements in the Business Model of Dollar Tree, which are Customer Proposition Value and Profit Formula. Customer Proposition value lays out how the company is going to satisfy customer needs at a price the customer will consider a good value. In the case of Dollar Tree’s company one dollar for all products they offer is both a good value for the price they pay, and satisfying. Profit Formula describes how the company is going to determine a cost structure that will provide profits. Dollar Tree company, in order to keep up with competition, has to purchase very aggressively when products of extreme value come their way, even if it means overloading...
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...Dollarama Inc. The Canadian Dollar Store Giant 1 Dollarama Inc. The Canadian Dollar Store Giant October 20th 2013 Dollarama Inc. The Canadian Dollar Store Giant 2 Abstract This paper will explore the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of the internal and external factors that contribute to the success and potential failure of Dollarama Inc. The different factors we will look into include competition, technology, ethics, globalization and environment. Dollarama Inc.’s mission is to provide value for the customer and to surpass the customers’ expectations; “Dollarama’s success is a demonstration of the type of retailing innovation that can drive brand growth”. (Brand Finance, 2013). As you read, you will discover that there are many opportunities for Dollarama to increase its business, even if it is the biggest and most successful dollar store chain in Canada. Dollarama Inc. The Canadian Dollar Store Giant Dollarama Inc. The Canadian Dollar Store Giant 3 Dollarama was founded in 1992 by Larry Rossy. It it’s the leading dollar store chain with over 800 locations throughout Canada. Their business strategy is to provide customers products that are of good quality and value and in convenient locations. Contrary to popular belief, the customer base that shops at Dollarama ranges from the richer populations to the poorer populations. Having a great deal of pressure on profit margins, in 2012, Dollarama rolled out new price points, prices...
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...future. These goals not only include financial but also community, environmental, and charitable goals. The following data will cover Wal-Mart’s latest strategic initiative while answering several key questions concerning the initiative, which include: 1. How the initiative affects the organizations financial plan 2. How the initiative affects costs and sales 3. Risks and affects associated with the initiative Strategic Planning Initiative for Wal-Mart and Initiative Identified in Annual Report A strategic planning initiative Wal-Mart implemented to help grow the company is the “Save Money, Live Better” initiative. To ensure the initiative was a success, the company identified several components that needed to be addressed. For example, one of the “Save Money, Live Better” initiative’s objectives is to achieve price leadership for Wal-Mart. The company’s plan to achieve price leadership is to do everything in its power to offer its products at a greater value than other competitors in the market while not hindering the company’s growth objective (Murray, 2012). In response to the price leadership component of the initiative, Wal-Mart determined its private label products can both help increase the company’s revenue and aid in achieving the initiative’s objective. As a result of the economy’s current condition,...
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...competitive advantage. Firms measure their strategic effectiveness by using measurement guidelines. This paper will examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is a multinational retail chain headquartered in the Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded by business man Sam Walton in 1962. It quickly grew and by 1967 Walton owned 24 stores doing $12.7 million in sales. Today Wal-Mart is the third largest company in the world, employs over two million employees, and has over 8,900 locations worldwide. The firm is one of the most valuable companies in the world. Wal-Mart creates a competitive advantage by using a cost leadership strategy. Cost leadership is a strategy used by businesses to create a low cost of operation within their niche....
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...has been so successful. Over the past eight years, I have had the opportunity to get a first-hand look at how the company has changed using different approaches such as Kotter’s eight step method – create an urgency, form a powerful coalition, create a vision for change, communicate the vision, remove obstacles, create short term wins, rebuild on the change, and anchor the changes in corporate culture. The history of a company is important to change, knowing where the company began and how that company has gotten to their current position through the change process. Walmart began in 1962 with the vision of one man, Sam Walton, wanting to sell products for less and to give excellent customer service. He believed in leadership through service and had a servant leadership...
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...Strategy Dollar General’s mission statement is “Serving Others.” To carry out this mission, the Company has developed a business strategy of providing its customers with a focused assortment of fairly priced, consumable merchandise in a convenient, small-store format. Our Customers . The Company serves the basic consumable needs of customers primarily in the low and middle-income brackets and those on fixed incomes. According to AC Nielsen’s 2005 Homescan® data, in 2005 approximately 48% of the Company’s customers earned less than $30,000 per year and approximately 26% earned less than $20,000 per year. The Company’s merchandising and operating strategies are primarily designed to meet the need for basic consumable products of the consumers in these lower income groups. Our Stores . The traditional Dollar General store has, on average, approximately 6,800 square feet of selling space and generally serves customers who live within five miles of the store. Of the Company’s 8,019 stores operating as of March 3, 2006, approximately 4,580 serve communities with populations of 20,000 or less. The Company believes that its target customers prefer the convenience of a small, neighborhood store. The Company believes that Dollar General’s convenient discount store format will continue to attract customers and provide the Company with a competitive advantage. In 2003, the Company began testing a Dollar General Market concept. Dollar General Markets are larger than the...
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...Competitive Advantages? Wal-Mart’s strategy is based on ensuring customer satisfaction and high-volume sales by offering a diverse range of products at low price and with relatively good service. A key factor underpinning the phenomenal growth and success of Wal-Mart has been the way in which it has matched its internal resources and capabilities (what it does well) with its external environment (what the market demands and what the competitors offer) to satisfy customer needs, maximise revenues for shareholders and innovate and diversify ahead of the competition. Stalk, Evans & Shulman (1992: 57) maintain that Wal-Mart epitomises “capabilities-based competition”. Competencies are the collective learning, technologies and culture in an organisation which arise through the integration of diverse production skills, harmonisation of technologies, and open communication and commitment across organisational boundaries. Core competencies enable access to wide variety of markets, add customer value, and are difficult to imitate and thus constitute a source of competitive advantage (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). Wal-Mart’s competitive advantages include: • Sophisticated logistics system – Wal-Mart’s internal capabilities in inventory management and distribution have played a key role in maintaining its ability to continuously deliver on its CVP of ensuring the maximum availability and accessibility of goods, being trustworthy, and ensuring ‘everyday low prices’. Supply chain management is...
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...October 8, 2001 Contents 1 What is game theory? 2 Definitions of games 3 Dominance 4 Nash equilibrium 5 Mixed strategies 6 Extensive games with perfect information 7 Extensive games with imperfect information 8 Zero-sum games and computation 9 Bidding in auctions 10 Further reading 4 6 8 12 17 22 29 33 34 38 This is the draft of an introductory survey of game theory, prepared for the Encyclopedia of Information Systems, Academic Press, to appear in 2002. ∗ 1 Glossary Backward induction Backward induction is a technique to solve a game of perfect information. It first considers the moves that are the last in the game, and determines the best move for the player in each case. Then, taking these as given future actions, it proceeds backwards in time, again determining the best move for the respective player, until the beginning of the game is reached. Common knowledge A fact is common knowledge if all players know it, and know that they all know it, and so on. The structure of the game is often assumed to be common knowledge among the players. Dominating strategy A strategy dominates another strategy of a player if it always gives a better payoff to that player, regardless of what the other players are doing. It weakly dominates the other strategy if it is always at least as good. Extensive game An extensive game (or extensive form game) describes with a tree how a game is played. It depicts the order in which players make moves, and the information each player has at...
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...Contents 1 What is game theory? 2 Definitions of games 3 Dominance 4 Nash equilibrium 5 Mixed strategies 6 Extensive games with perfect information 7 Extensive games with imperfect information 8 Zero-sum games and computation 9 Bidding in auctions 10 Further reading 4 6 8 12 17 22 29 33 34 38 This is the draft of an introductory survey of game theory, prepared for the Encyclopedia of Information Systems, Academic Press, to appear in 2002. ∗ 1 Glossary Backward induction Backward induction is a technique to solve a game of perfect information. It first considers the moves that are the last in the game, and determines the best move for the player in each case. Then, taking these as given future actions, it proceeds backwards in time, again determining the best move for the respective player, until the beginning of the game is reached. Common knowledge A fact is common knowledge if all players know it, and know that they all know it, and so on. The structure of the game is often assumed to be common knowledge among the players. Dominating strategy A strategy dominates another strategy of a player if it always gives a better payoff to that player, regardless of what the other players are doing. It weakly dominates the other strategy if it is always at least as good. Extensive game An extensive game (or extensive form game) describes with a tree how a game is played. It depicts the order in which players make moves, and the information each player has at each decision...
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...to run the business in full time. Dell began assembling his own computers in 1985 and marketed them through ads in the computer trade publications. In 1987 his company witnessed tremendous change it launched its first catalog, initiated a field sales force to reach large corporate accounts, went public , changed its name from PCs limited to Dell Computer Corporate , and established its first international subsidiary in Britain . Dell was selected as the entrepreneur of the year by Inc. in 1989, man of the year in 1992 by PC Magazine, and CEO of the year by Financial World in 1993. In 1992 the company was included for the first time among the Fortune 500 roster of the world's largest companies. By 1995 with sales nearly 3.5billion dollars , the company was the world's leading direct marketer of personal computers and one of the top 5 PC vendors in the world . In 1996, Dell supplemented its direct mail and telephone sales by offering PCs via the internet at Dell.com. By 2001, Dell ranked first in global market share and number 1 in the United States for shipments of standard Intel architecture servers. The company changed its name to Dell Inc. In 2003 as a way of reflecting the evolution of the company into a diverse...
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...of the other players. Mixed Strategy A mixed strategy is an active randomization, with given probabilities, that determines the player’s decision. As a special case, a mixed strategy can be the deterministic choice of one of the given pure strategies. Nash Equilibrium A Nash equilibrium, also called strategic equilibrium, is a list of strategies, one for each player, which has the property that no player can unilaterally change his strategy and get a better payoff. Pay-Off A payoff is a number, also called utility, that reflects the desirability of an outcome to a player, for whatever reason. When the outcome is random, payoffs are usually weighted with their probabilities. The expected payoff incorporates the player’s attitude towards risk. Perfect information A game has perfect information when at any point in time only one player makes a move, and knows all the actions that have been made until then. Player A player is an agent who makes decisions in a game. Rationality A player is said to be rational if he seeks to play in a manner which maximizes his own payoff. It is often assumed that the rationality of all players is common knowledge. Strategic form A game in strategic form, also called normal form, is a compact representation of a game in which players simultaneously choose their strategies. The resulting payoffs are presented in a table with a cell for each strategy combination. Strategy In a game in strategic form, a strategy is one of the given possible...
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...Industry Surveys Retailing: General Jason Asaeda, Department & General Merchandise Stores Equity Analyst JUNE 2013 Current Environment ............................................................................................ 1 Industry Profile .................................................................................................... 12 Industry Trends ................................................................................................... 13 How the Industry Operates ............................................................................... 23 Key Industry Ratios and Statistics ................................................................... 29 How to Analyze a Retail Company ................................................................... 31 Glossary ................................................................................................................ 36 Industry References ........................................................................................... 37 Comparative Company Analysis ...................................................................... 38 This issue updates the one dated November 2012. The next update of this Survey is scheduled for December 2013. CONTACTS: INQUIRIES & CLIENT RELATIONS 800.852.1641 clientrelations@ standardandpoors.com SALES 877.219.1247 wealth@spcapitaliq.com MEDIA Marc Eiger 212.438.1280 marc.eiger@spcapitaliq.com S&P CAPITAL IQ 55 Water Street New York, NY 10041 ...
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... Section 9044 8/9/2011 Section I II III Executive summary Introduction Exercise 1: Toyota Production System (TPS) today TPS term definitions & practical examples IV Exercise 1: TPS as a total entity Advantages Limitations Evolution TPS use among other companies V Exercise 2: Grid analysis (Weighted scoring model) Exogenous factors & assumptions Endogenous factors & assumptions Constraints VI VII Exercise 2: Location recommendation Exercise 3: Decision tree analysis TMMC production capacity recommendation Limitations Past performance: RX 330/350 VIII Exercise 4: Current regional production strategy Assessment Change recommendations IX Summary Appendix A References Page 2 3 4 4 7 7 8 8 9 10 11 13 16 16 17 17 18 19 19 19 21 21 23 24 1 I. Executive Summary Toyota Motor Corporation is leading the way to future mobility through innovation, productivity, quality and efficiency. Toyota uses a self-developed strategy known as the Toyota Production System (TPS) to guide business process improvements. This strategy applies principles of “just-in-time” production, also called “lean”, to align supply closely with consumer demand while avoiding surplus inventory. The report defines eight TPS terms, i.e. jidoka, just-intime, hoshin, heijunka, muda, kaizen, standardized work, and pokayoke; and gives examples of how terms are applied in other industries. TPS has been utilized by a variety of industries all over the world, though many organizations tailor system components to...
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...stores and it has everything a homemaker can ever think of. It is arguably the largest retail chain that deals with millions of product ranging from furnitures, clothes, groceries, books, movies, electronic, jewelries, baby products and much more. In the 1960s through the 1970s, companies realized strong engineering, design, and manufacturing functions were strong market strategy keys to create and capture customer loyalty. As the demand for new products rose in the 1980s, these market requirements were to increase their flexibility and responsiveness to adapt existing products and processes or to develop new ones in order to meet customer needs. As manufacturing improved in the 1990s, managers began noticing material and service inputs involving suppliers and their major impact on an organization‘s ability to meet customer needs. As a result of these changes, organizations now find that it difficult to manage their own organizations. Today, Wal-Mart topped the list of the America‘s biggest companies on the Fortune 500 list, ―with sales of almost $345 billion — more than a quarter of a trillion dollars‖ (Forbs). In 2014, Walmart stock products made in more than 70 countries and at any given time, operates more than 11,000 stores in 27 countries around the...
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...that is a global leader in the retail grocery industry with over 7000 stores worldwide. The company has a good reputation for their high quality products with low pricing. The purpose of this assessment is to investigate how well ALDI align their human resource strategies to the overall business strategy. The report commence with a presentation of the company’s main features, where it started and how it has developed to be an international leader. Further on, the assessment contains an explanation of what business strategy ALDI has in the organisation and what the people management processes and practices look like in the company. Lastly it identifies actual examples of people management processes and how well they are applied into the organisation. Improvements are highlighted as a way for the organisation to improve and be able to remain competitive on the international market. Key findings of this report are that the current business strategy is a cost leadership approach. The strategic management of ALDI at present is one of expansion and growth. The employee management reflects this as ALDI is participating in a period of recruitment and employee training and development. The marketing strategy illustrates the sustainable competitive advantage ALDI possesses of providing high quality processes at a low relative cost to mainstream brands. The business model is accompanies the strategic management, ensuring the business is lean, dynamic and focuses of simplicity and efficiencies...
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