Whole Foods Market Case Study

Case 7: Whole Foods Market 2007

Shraddha Koirala

International American University

King 's College

BUS 590 Business Strategy

Submitted to: Dr. Raj Kumar Sharma

August 16, 2015

Introduction John Mackey started his entrepreneurial life with a store. In 1980 as a result of joint venture, John established the Whole Food Market in Austin, Texas. Now he has pioneered "Whole Foods Market" as the largest natural and organic food supermarket. The company presently operates in the 31 states of USA and in Canada and also in the European Market with over 193 stores. Over 32000 staffs work under the Whole Food Company. In 2002 the U.S. Department of Agriculture qualified the organic and natural products provided by the company as the "certified

"Corporate first, team member second and stockholder third"

• Unique Brand i.e. "Quality you can taste."

• Unique Corporate Culture

• Perishable implementation such as local producer loan program etc. Based on the competitive advantage, the company should come up with better strategies. The present strategies applied by the company are as follows:

i. General Strategy: Under this strategy differentiation strategy i.e. value-added pricing strategy is used. It keeps the customer loyal as it provides special service to the customer that cannot be found elsewhere. ii. Operations Strategy: The expansion and acquisition strategy is applied under the operations strategy by making high barriers of entry for the would-be entrants. iii. Promotional Strategy: Discount offers and "Great Deal" campaigns are done for the promotions of products. Similarly other strategies like website designing, advertisement, word-of-mouth and even sampling is done. Sampling is done by providing small portions of food for tasting to the customers.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

• Supplies natural whole and organic food which is good for health

• Known as organic market leader

• High customer service and satisfaction

• Have focused growth

• focus on low cost and differentiation strategy

• reduce the upstream of supply cost

• company should focus and change on the target market i.e. price sensitive and organic-health oriented market

• marketing strategies should be applied more to the European market where people are more organic-food oriented

• price-skimming strategy can be applied

• value-base pricing can also be used

• varied service can be opened like the online ordering and store-events

• private label meat and seafood offerings can be increased

Conclusion In this way John Mackey has proved the "leading by example" theory by incorporating the best practices and lesson learned. The company also focuses on the friendly and team-based environment and relates their mission and vision coherently so as to achieve their objectives. So by applying the above mentioned recommendations and future strategies the company can overcome its concern over the growing demand and supply and lack of resources.

References Chairez, S. (2013, April 26). Prezi. Retrieved from www.prezi.com: https://prezi.com/piuuegvuqq06/whole-foods-market/ Pearce II, J. A., & Robinson, J. R. (2011). Strategic Management Formulation, Implementation and Control 12th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill