Resources and Capabilities of Australian Supermarkets: Woolworths and Coles

Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
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1INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
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