Resources and Capabilities of Australian Supermarkets: Woolworths and Coles

This article discusses the resources and capabilities of Australian supermarkets Woolworths and Coles, including their supply chain management, brand reputation, and digital capabilities.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
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Resources:
It is to note that the term resource refers to the stock or the supply of money or materials
or any other assets which could be drawn on by any company so as to function in effective
manner (Tseng and Lee 2014). In terms, of supermarkets, Australia is widely popular as being
the hub or world’s top supermarket. The two, well-known organisations under this sector, called
the Woolworths and Coles are regarded as the world’s 19th and 15th biggest-selling retailers
respectively, but it is notable that their size generates more disquiet than the national pride.
Woolworths owns the one and only grocery distributor prevailing in Tasmania, and this means
that Coles imports all its produce from the mainland as well as its small competitor such as
Marco Nikitaras flies, many times a month, right from the food bowl of Tasmania to the
Melbourne, where he compares the prices of its products and wants better deals (Gogoll 2015).
Woolworths and Coles have the advantage of having many of the physical locations close to the
consumers. With the same, the major supermarkets as such in Australia already have the scale
and the logistical strength for expanding their online capabilities by means of options like click-
and-collect. The Australian supermarkets, especially Coles and Woolworths have a total of three
major value creating functions and they are of inbound logistics, the operations and the sales and
marketing. In the inbound logistics, they control the distribution process or network of their
products that helps them to ensure the distribution efficiency and the quality. While in the
operations, the strict quality assessment procedures and the inventory management processes
helps in creating value creation. Lastly, the sales and marketing departments is the part where
these companies takes actions regarding their promotional activities so that they remain
competitive in the market. It is also to note that the three most valuable resources of the

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Australian supermarket are that of their highly efficient supply chain management, their brand
reputation as well as their effective top-level management system.
Capabilities:
As per Chen and Miller (2015), the capabilities of an organisation refers to its potential or
ability to manage the resources like the employees in order to effectively gain a competitive
advantage over its competitors in the business environment. Woolworths and Coles were highly
expanding their online presence in the anticipation of the arrival of Amazon in the market. Coles
opened its very first online-only “dark store” in the Melbourne city. It is also to note that much
more are expected to open over within the coming five years. Their core capabilities are their
effective supply chain management process as well as their world-wide brand reputation. With
the same, the quality of their products that they supply all around the world are high and they are
effectively meeting the demands of their customers since their emergence. The digital device that
Coles is making use of namely the hiku device is incorporating voice-recognition capabilities in
the organisation and this in turn is allowing the customers of the company in creating a shopping
lists as well as managing the whole shopping experience in a whole new way (Johnson 2016).
Woolworths and Coles are two of the digital analytics leaders in the present business world and
through this way, they are united and are improved in terms of data analytics strategy as well as
capabilities.

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Resources:
Chen, M.J. and Miller, D., 2015. Reconceptualizing competitive dynamics: A multidimensional
framework. Strategic Management Journal, 36(5), pp.758-775.
Gogoll, N., 2015. Australian wine companies: Taming the wild things. Australian and New
Zealand Grapegrower and Winemaker, (615), p.22.
Johnson, L.L., 2016. Writing 2.0: How English teachers conceptualize writing with digital
technologies. English Education, 49(1), p.28.
Tseng, S.M. and Lee, P.S., 2014. The effect of knowledge management capability and dynamic
capability on organizational performance. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 27(2),
pp.158-179.