Hrm 531 Week 4 Whole Foods Case

Prospectors

Opportunities

Mature market – The organization currently operates in a mature market. However regardless of the expected drop in growth rate, the brands within the market will start positioning themselves in the marketplace, and there will be increase in competition for Market Share in the Industry. This creates an opportunity for the organization to develop a strong unique brand that’s meaningful to the target audience. Developing an effective grand will strategically position the firm against competitors.

Mergers & Acquisition – There is an opportunity for Baldwin to consolidate with other firms in the industry. Merging or acquiring a target business in the MEMS (Micro- Electro- Mechanical Systems) senor market could lead to

Customer Service – Baldwin invested heavily into the sales and promotional budget in the first few years of the firm. Therefore we were able to create excellent customer awareness and product accessibility. From the 1st year we were able to recognize that each segments of both promotional and sales budget responded differently to each media type. Therefore we assigned the necessary funds that would strengthen our reach and frequency. These initial investments kept us going even when we had to reduce the marketing budget in year 4.

Human Resources – Balwin effectively managed the firm’s human resources by investing in at least 40 hours of training every year. The firm was also able to avoid a strike, by effectively negotiating with works during the HR Labor Negotiations.

Weaknesses

High Start-up Costs – At year 1, we invested a lot of money into R&D and automation. The very high costs of starting a business required a lot of investments and loans. Therefore we struggled with profitability in the first few

Poor Customer service - Premature Reduction of marketing budget in year 5 led to decrease in customer awareness and accessibility.

Pricing - lack of understanding of how Capsim works (repositioning the product to a different segment in year 4) led to us underpricing a product we assumed had moved to a different segment. We charged less that the price in the customer buying criteria, thereby reducing contribution margin and eventually reducing profit for that year.

Mismanaging TQM – In a particular year, we overspent on TQM, leading to diminishing returns. Product positioning – In some years, some product were positioned in the rough cut. They didn’t sell as well as our competitors’ products, we lost a lot of market shares and had less profit.

Inventory Management – Baldwin frequently had too much stock in inventory which incurred higher inventory