Big W: A Case Study on the Impact of Online Sales on Traditional Stores

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Economics for Manager
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
Purpose and scope..................................................................................................................3
2. Background of the research....................................................................................................3
3. Problem statement..................................................................................................................4
4. Literature review: Secondary data.........................................................................................4
5. Research design and justification...........................................................................................5
6. Details of specific method......................................................................................................6
7. Sampling technique................................................................................................................7
8. Proposed data analysis...........................................................................................................7
9. Ethical issues..........................................................................................................................7
10. Budget..................................................................................................................................8
11. Timelines..............................................................................................................................8
Reference List............................................................................................................................9
Appendix..................................................................................................................................10

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1. Introduction
Purpose and scope
This research would be beneficial to find out the fundamental reasons of getting distracted by
the Aussies towards Big W and hence, based on this research, the management will be
capable to take the best possible decisions for the business of the company. As a result, it can
be stated that the organisation will successfully run its business across the Australian market.
In this respect, the researcher will be going to highlight:
 The background of the discussed problem will be highlighted.
 Discuss the role of management in boosting up the organisational performance level
and in this context, secondary research will be conducted, and the data would be
collected from the articles and journals written by some eminent authors.
 After that data collection and the research methodology will be accomplished for
deriving the best possible solution
 In order to complete the research, the anticipated budget and timeline will be
analysed.
2. Background of the research
Big W is a division of the Woolworths Group, which is an eminent Australian chain for
serves its operation in the discounted departmental store. There are approximately 182 stores
of Big W across Australia and approximately 22000 employees are engaged with the
company (Big W, 2019). Though Big W is one of the most demanded firms by the Aussies
since the last 40 years, however, the parent firm that is Woolworths has planned to close the
venture in the coming three years. Bleier and Eisenbeiss (2015) mentioned that Big W has
incurred a loss of $150.5 million until the year 2017. Besides, the organisation has also
incurred a loss of $110 million in 2019. This is the prime reason of closing 30 to 60 stores of
Big W by Woolworths (Lannin, 2019). Before taking any suitable decision by the
management of Woolworths, it is necessary to highlight the key issues and challenges faced
by the organisation, in this respect, it can be stated that Woolworths would not be capable to
rule out across the industry. In addition, as per the recent research, the customers mostly
prefer to purchase products from JB Hi-Fi or Aldi over Big W for meeting their needs. This is

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the reason, why the management of the organisation needs to take an optimum decision for
the sake of improving the financial health of the business. More specifically, the researcher
will try to find out the required approaches, which will be beneficial for the management for
dealing with the current organisational challenge. As a result, the managers will be capable to
attract more investors, so that they will like to sponsor in the business. In this context, it can
be stated that the goodwill of the parent firm will be the fundamental aspect in attracting the
investors more successfully and the managers will be successful to prevent the closing of
stores. For instance, the managers can increase the investment for staring its venture in online
sales with the rising trend across the country. This is one of the essential approaches to deal
with the issue.
3. Problem statement
It can be stated that with the closing of stores of Big W, a large percentage of employees of
the organisation will be jobless. It will directly affect the economic situation of the country
since a certain percentage of employees will be unemployed. This will be one of the major
reasons for increasing the rate of unemployment in the country. On the other hand, since the
competitiveness in the Australian retailing industry has been rising, therefore, the
organisation needs to fix the problem, so that it can deal with the situation instead of closing
the stores.
4. Literature review: Secondary data
In this section, the researcher is going to analyse the theoretical aspects related to the given
topic for finding out and deriving conclusion after the data collection process. As per the
above discussion, it can be observed that for compensating the financial loss of Big W, the
parent company Woolworths is going to close the stores of Big W, in the next three years.
Based on the following theoretical discussion, the researcher will be able to gather knowledge
and can get an idea about the consequences of closing the stores of Big W by Woolworths in
the future. After finding the anticipated findings, the management can find the importance of
taking an optimum decision for the growth of the organisation in the future instead of cutting
the employees from the business. Before, describing the required schemes and factors for
influencing the management decision of Big W, it is necessary to discuss the retail industry of
Australia precisely.