Strategic Management of Coles Group in Australia

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Strategic Management
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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Executive Summary
The report throws light on the strategic analysis of the supermarket named Coles Group in
Australia. The report follows a systematic format whereby the brief overview of the company
has been provided followed by the analysis of the strategy adopted by the firm. The Business
model throws light on how the business functions and how it is performing in the market. The
report has helped in understanding the value curves of Coles Supermarket that has assisted in
understanding their marketing position and strategy in competitive market. The different kind
of external and internal fit has been analysed effectually with the usage of different PESTEL
and Porter’s Five Forces Analysis. The different kind of generic strategies has been applied in
an effectual manner to properly describe the characteristics of the firm effectually.

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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................3
2. Assessment of Coles` Strategy...........................................................................................3
2.1. Mission statement of Coles Group..................................................................................4
2.2 Generic strategy.........................................................................................................4
2.3 Business Model................................................................................................................5
2.4 Value Curves....................................................................................................................7
3. Evaluation of Strategy of Coles.............................................................................................8
3.1 Industry Framework.........................................................................................................9
3.2 External Fit.....................................................................................................................10
3.3 Internal Fit......................................................................................................................10
4. Conclusion and Recommendations......................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................13

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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
1. Introduction
The primary aim of the given report is to check and analyze the strategic positioning
of the Australian supermarket brand which is the Coles group. The Coles Group is under the
Wesfarmers group of companies and is one of the largest supermarket brands in the given
country (Hill, Jones and Schilling 2014). The Coles Group Limited is an Australian public
limited company which has various retail stores around the country. The given retail chain
store has its head office in Melbourne. The first Coles group had opened in Melbourne in the
year 1914. The given stores were under the acquisition of different company groups but had
been acquired by Wesfarmers in 2007. However recently in the year 2017 the given
acquisition had been given away and the company functions independently at present. The
two huge brands, Woolworths and Coles tend to have the major share of the Australian
market. Although world wide it has been observed that the Supermarket industry is not a very
strong one, but the Australian supermarket is a relatively profitable industry and has been the
major target of a majority of international companies.
The given report will be throwing light on the strategic positioning of Coles in the
Australian Supermarket (Wheelen, et al. 2017). The strategy of Cole’s group will be analyzed
in the first section followed by the Industrial Context and the Environmental Analysis of
Coles.
2. Assessment of Coles` Strategy
The Coles Group of Retail stores has come forward in the given industry by using a
particular strategy in order to expand the business case and in order to compete with its
primary competitor which is the Woolworths (Lasserre 2017). Hence, this section will be
analyzing the strategy used by Coles using the Porter`s generic strategies tool and also the
related internal as well as external fir is examined.