Strategic Objectives of Woolworths

CASE STUDY

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
The Current problem faced by Woolworths................................................................................3
Application of Models and theories in order to analyse the problem and its effect....................4
Designing Appropriate Intervention...........................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Woolworths commonly known as Woolies is a retail supermarket chain having their
headquarters in Bella Vista, New South Wales, Australia and their parent company is
Woolworths Group. The company at present has 1000 stores spread throughout Australia and is
also operating through online medium through their website. It was founded in year 1924 and
their slogan is “The Fresh Food People”. In this report, the major problem that the company is
currently facing has been discussed and appropriate models and theories have been Implemented
in order to solve these problems (Ferguson, 2018). This report also identifies the intervention
which the company should adopt in order to successfully resolve the issue that they are facing
and at last appropriate conclusions and recommendations have been made in the report.
MAIN BODY
The Current problem faced by Woolworths.
Woolworths is a retail store based in Australia and basically deals in grocery products.
Although the company is well established and has expanded its operations in many country,
there are currently increasing number of problems that Woolworths is facing. The sales of the
company is regularly declining and the market share of the company in Australia's Grocery
market is dwindling (Strategy and Objectives, 2019). The company ha been facing a tough
competition form its major competitor Coles and the increase in the trend of giving discounts and
selling goods at lowest price possible has led to decline of the popularity as the emerging
competitors like Aldi has implemented this strategy. They are presenting themselves as threat
despite their late entry because their products are priced at much lower rates and their focus is on
increasing their market share in the home country. The price war is further intensifying as the
prices are regularly falling lower so the management at Woolworths need to adopt and formulate
proper strategies which will help them ion dealing with the problem. The share price of the
company has already skewed down and the cash flows are regularly declining. This decline in
the revenue has led to the employees either being removed or increased employee turnover as
they are looking out for better options and hence the company is loosing their trained and
valuable personnel as well which is affecting the company doubly in a negative manner (Spillan
and Ling, 2015).
Therefore, there are series of problems that the company is experiencing due to decreased
sales and company needs to restructure their strategies and redefine policies.
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Application of Models and theories in order to analyse the problem and its effect.
The major issues that Woolworths is experiencing is declining sales and this issue can be
addressed by critically reviewing the current policies and strategies. For changing the current
business practices, company can changing its leadership style. At present the company has
implemented autocratic leadership style in their organizational culture where they don't involve
their employees in the decision making process and the top management formulates all the
strategies (Andersson, 2017). The company should adopt Democratic Leadership Style under
which the company can change their current leadership practices and implement those policies
which will help them in taking shared decisions. Implementing democratic leadership will help
in following manner :-
 It will increase the engagement of employees of the company which will provide the
management with a fresh view point and they will be able to formulate a better view of
their company's position in the eye of the customers as employees are the people who
might be actually visiting Woolworths or know those people who are visiting the stores.
 When employees are involved in the decision making process, every failure or success of
the decisions taken will be treated as their own and they will try to determine on the
individual basis regarding what were the factors that led to success or failure.
 In the present case, the problem of decreasing sales can be adequately solved because
when employees will trust their leaders and their actions, it will automatically make them
motivated to work harder thus developing various marketing mechanisms and by
implementing them, they will be able to target their customers again (Hur, 2018).
Apart form leadership theory, another technique which will help in meeting the current
crisis that Woolworths is facing involves implementation of Herzberg's Motivational Theory.
This theory gives two factors which are Hygiene factors and motivating factors which help in
making the employee base motivated and dedicated. However, this theory can further influence
the sales of the company in a positive manner :-
Hygiene Factor :- Hygiene factor involves giving a healthy environment and providing safe
working conditions etc. in which an employee can work freely and concentrate on achieving
their targets. These hygiene factors will also help employees in understanding what the buyers
expect as when they themselves will understand the importance of these hygiene factors, they
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