Asda's Strategic Management: A Comprehensive Case Study Analysis

This strategic management case study provides an in-depth analysis of Asda, a British supermarket chain, focusing on its strategic approaches and competitive positioning. The analysis employs several strategic management tools, including the VRIO framework to assess Asda's resources and capabilities, the PESTLE framework to evaluate external environmental factors such as political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental influences, and Porter's Five Forces model to understand the competitive forces within the supermarket industry. The study examines Asda's purpose, vision, mission, and objectives, highlighting their importance in guiding the company's strategies. Furthermore, the report discusses the importance of change management, considering transformation processes, costs, risks, and sustainability, and it reviews the organizational strategies implemented by Asda to maintain and enhance its market position. This assignment is available on Desklib, a platform offering a wealth of study resources for students.

Strategic Management case
study analysis
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Assessment process used by the organisation to determine their strategies ..........................3
Purpose, Vision, Mission and Objectives..........................................................................3
Critical analysis of models and tools .....................................................................................4
VRIO Framework..............................................................................................................4
PESTLE Framework..........................................................................................................5
Porter's Five Forces model................................................................................................6
Application of these tools to real organisation.......................................................................7
VRIO Framework..............................................................................................................7
PESTLE Framework..........................................................................................................8
Porter's Five Forces model................................................................................................9
Importance of change management based on the transformation process, cost, risk and its
sustainability.........................................................................................................................10
Organisational strategies..................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References .....................................................................................................................................13
Books and Journals...............................................................................................................13
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Introduction
Strategic management refers to the process that analysis the market of an organisation
and needed for managing their services in the products. This further provide a support for
development to meet the business objectives by using corrective methods and models.
Additionally, the use of strategic management within the organisation is basically helpful for
intensifying the ability of working on the different areas (Cabral, 2021). The chosen organisation
for this project is Asda, which is a British supermarket chain and its headquartered is in Leeds,
England. Asda was founded in 1949, when the Asquith family merged their business with
Associated Dairies of Yorkshire. The main products of the company are in grocery, general
merchandise and different financial services. This report covers the external and internal
environmental factors which make a high impact on the organisations strategies. Furthermore,
the review of the organisational strategic plan has been discussed in respect to the organisational
strategies.
Main Body
Assessment process used by the organisation to determine their strategies
Purpose, Vision, Mission and Objectives
Asda is the organisation that deals in the big opportunities and serving their customers by
managing more than 600 stores. The company is securing their profit of £60million on daily
basis (About Asda, 2021). The core purpose, vision, mission and objectives of the company is
basically helpful for analysing the internal and external changes happened in business
environment.
Purpose
The main purpose of Asda is to help their stakeholders to understand why business
exists (Dehghan Tooran Poshti and et.al., 2021). That is related to provide effective services to
products and services that are more affordable for the use of the customers. Further, Asda use
their values which are helpful for respecting the idea for each other and make their culture in an
effective way. Creating values is associated to make a better change and tackle the challenges
faced during environmental footprint and producing healthier products to support the committees
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(Čirjevskis, 2021). This can be said the use of different challenges and growth are helpful for
considering the value and bringing new partners with the use of right opportunities and skills.
Vision
Their vision is to analyse the need of their customer and solve different challenges that
indicate adoption of techniques used by the company to analyse behaviour of young people.
Further, it will be helpful for managing good technological resources for getting a statement to
develop an understanding for basic environment.
Mission
The main mission of the company is to explore the Britain's best-value retailers and
exceeds to their customer's value that are needs to grow in market at regular basis. With the help
of effective communication and appropriate objectives, the mission of the company is achieved
and make the high level satisfaction to their customers (About Asda, 2021).
Objectives
The main objective of the company is basically tries to make a constant environment with
friendly nature. This can be helpful for generalising the statement and make systematic
approaches for minimising the use of raw material in market.
Critical analysis of models and tools
VRIO Framework
VRIO analysis is the analytical techniques and growth for brilliant evaluation of the
company's resources and it is analysed that this technique is considered on the competitive
advantages. VRIO is used as acronym from the initials like Value, Rareness, Imitable and
Organisation.
 Value: This refers to the stages that are helpful for adding value to their customers and
make opportunities in the market. This is related to exploit opportunities and competition
with the growth of internal capabilities and standards (Dehghan Tooran Poshti and et.al.,
2021).
 Rarity: Controlling on the different sources and capabilities of the organisation is
basically helpful for VRIO framework. This is related to the different features of the
organisations products in market and make systematic growth in the major activities.
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 Imitable: This is referred to the duplication of the organisational structure capabilities
in market. This find very difficult for the society to manage their effective competitive
environment and growth within the organisations.
 Organisation: The appropriate use of effective resources, management system, processes
and structures are used to capitalise the management of an organisation. To analyse the
company and make sure that following and unused competitive advantages gained the
sustained competitive advantages (Darinskaya and et.al., 2021).
PESTLE Framework
Pestle analysis is referred to the different concepts of external marketing principles. This
is basically helpful for generalising the statement and having key factors like, political,
economic, social, technologies, legal and environmental aspects (Duhaime, Hitt and Lyles,
2021). This analysis basically provides a flexible organisational environment and make
appropriate decision making process. Pestle is used for strategic business planning, workforce
planning, marketing planning, product development and people strategies within the market.
 Political factors: This factor include the different laws, government intervention that
may influence the market environment. Political factors may include the tax, fiscal
policy, trade tariffs and etc.
 Economic factors: This factor is main determinants of economy and analyse the
performance that directly impact on the company. It will include the inflation rate,
interest rate, foreign exchange rate and economic growth rate to work and manage the
adaptability in the environment.
 Social factors: This is basically helpful for analysing the customer preferences like taste
and fashions. This analysis and include the basic feature and growth of the company to
attract more customers and understand the nature of changing factors that make an impact
on the company in many ways.
 Legal factors: This factor is basically helpful for controlling internal and external sides
of the legal factors. Further, it will be helpful for managing business environment in
different certain policies for analysing the growth in significant sectors (Fedushko and
et.al., 2021). Consumer laws, safety laws, labour laws and different factors are basically
helpful for analysing the legal factors.
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 Environmental factors: To influence the different surroundings and nature of
environment, pestle analysis has been conducted in systematic ways. The need to
complete the significant aspects for managing different environmental factors to make a
climate, location, geographical and global changes in the need of climate (Wall, 2021).
 Technological factors: This factor is basically used in an innovation and its use in
technologies that may affect the need for operating the challenges in analysing the
industry and make unfavourable challenges in different sectors and growth.
Porter's Five Forces model
It is an analytical tool which helps in assessing and analysing the competitive forces of an
organization against its competitors. This analysis helps in getting effective insights about the
company's position in the competitive markets.
 Bargaining power of suppliers: This force includes the demands and pressure exerted
by suppliers by using different strategies like decreasing product availability, reducing
quality of products etc. This process may help the company to get effective organisational
policy to manage the impact on the profits (Freund, Al-Majeed and Millard, 2021).
 Bargaining power of the buyers: In this force, customers exert pressure on the
companies to provide high quality goods at an affordable price with effective after sale
service. This force has a direct impact on the achievement of business objectives because
strong bargaining power from customers will reduce the profit margins and vice-versa.
 Competitive Rivalry: This force states that how the rivalry between the existing firms
can give tough competition to each other. Competitive rivalry helps in understanding
importance of competition and the ability to threaten rival companies by performing
exceptionally well.
 Threat of Substitution: This force involves threat of substitution in which companies try
to sell the alternatives of the product sold by its competitors and launch them in market to
grab the market share (Keding, 2021). A Substitute product may get an easy and cheap
product to weaken the positions and threaten the profitability within the organisation.
 Threat of New Entrants: This force states that how much a business is getting affected
because of the entry of a new competitor in market on its profitability and brand position.
This process takes money and efforts to make enter into the market and complete
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effectively on the basis of technologies, rivals and growth of international market in
different positions.
Application of these tools to real organisation
VRIO Framework
In the context of Asda, VRIO analysis is used to make systematic changes and growth to
address different combination and challenges by attaining the ultimate goals. These goals are
related to sustained competitive advantages for the different components of VRIO framework
(VRIO Analysis of ASDA, 2021).
Resources Valuable Rare Imitable Organisation
al
Competitive
advantages
Relationship
with suppliers
YES YES YES NO Unused
competitive
advantages
Human
resources
YES YES YES YES Long term
competitive
advantages
Customer
base
YES YES NO NO Competitive
equality
Management YES NO NO NO Competitive
disadvantages
 Valuable: Asda, is the company where the leaders of the company make their high
employees, customer base and drive the low costs. The company is using effective
relationship with their suppliers, talented human resources, customer base and the
appropriate management process (Kravchenko, 2021).
 Rare: The resources of Asda that is related to make a feel with uncommon in nature and
providing appropriate competitive advantages. The relationship with the suppliers, their
human resource and the management policies are effective for the team are rare for the
their competitors.
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 Imitable: Asda is using effective relationship with their supplier which is Imitable that
can't be used by the other competitors. Further, the skills of human resource team are
appropriate for showing the Imitable nature of the company in the competitive market. As
the employees of the company are can not be copied by the management for analysing
their skills.
 Organisational: This is built by the company by empowerment of the departments and
managing their sources to use appropriate challenges and regulations. It will be helpful
for analysing the challenging nature and make regulation for the organisational growth
and policies (Mohammadi, Danaei and Zargar, 2021).
PESTLE Framework
Pestle analysis is helpful for generating effective strategic planning and makingdifferent
analysis of micro factors that actually affect the company's environment. Pestle analysis and their
implication is basically helpful for generating the data and make significant growth in different
components of the company (PESTEL analysis of ASDA, 2021). It may further includes:
 Political factors: Asda modified the different business approaches that help the company
to exploring different region to analyse the positive and negative factors. Asda, get the
benefits for managing political environment of UK and higher GDP will make an impact
on the major benefits of the company. However, the impact of Brexit has created lots of
uncertainties and manage the data with insignificant manner.
 Economic factors: Asda needs to consider the different economic factors which are
related to different pay level, cost of credit, competitive pressures and major challenges
that are related to provide energy and pricing policies (Ogbanufe, Kim and Jones, 2021).
Asda, using cheap and reasonable pricing polices and manage the climatic, pollution and
other tax related strategies. These pricing, inflation and taxes policies are able to make
significant growth in the economic factors. All of these make an impact on increasing
sales, unemployment rates in the company.
 Social factors: There are different changes that are happened within the economy that
make an impact on the changes of the company. There are different social changes that
are related to ageing population, celebrity following and having a healthy lifestyle on
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Asda. In the company, the demand of organic food, sustainable process and vegan
process are growing very fast and make suitable changes in UK's social factors.
 Legal factors: Asda is using effectively abide with the major rules and regulation of the
UK. In context to the respective company, this factor helps them to gain positive image
in the market.. Whereas, Asda needs to follow the different laws related to transparency,
common law, business law, employment and legislation, IP rights protection act. This
make the negative impact on the growth of the company. As it is needed to follow all the
laws make the difficulties and challenges in their daily based activities and process.
 Environmental factors: This includes the using green economy, pollution friendly
nature, declining use of hazardous products. As all of these sources are very important for
the Asda (PĂUN and PÎNZARU, 2021). These make the impact on the organisation and
plays a significant role in the company in significant manners.
 Technological factors: Asda is using effective policies and process to manage the data
while using appropriate technological levels. They are using different beneficial activities
and factors for reducing the time and manage the changing environment and process for
the growth of the company. They are using B2B, B2C and internet technologies in
significant manner.
Porter's Five Forces model
ASDA Stores Ltd is a popular supermarket retailer chain in UK. It is dedicatedly offering
their customers everyday with low prices in grocery market which is a major factor that drives
the company to be competitive amongst its competitors. The five forces to analyse and
understand ASDA's competitive advantages are explained below:
 Bargaining power of suppliers: In relation to Asda, the bargaining power of the supplier
is high. Major reason behind this is that it is the third largest supermarket in UK and
suppliers who are supplying to top supermarket chains like Sainsbury, Tesco etc.
Therefore, they are constantly trying to reach top positions in the market by taking an
advantage of high competition in the current market.
 Bargaining power of the buyers: In relation to Asda, as the customers buying
behaviour pattern is highly dynamic so they may switch to other brands because of
presence of strong competitors in market (Rosenbaum-Elliott, 2021). The use of high
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competition is able to analyse their strategic change and applicabilities are helpful for
the competitors of the company. Therefore, bargaining power of customers in high in
case of Asda.
 Competitive Rivalry: With respect to Asda, the kind of marketplace it operates in
involves fierce competitions resulting into high competitive rivalry (Dawson and
Andriopoulos, 2021). Therefore, in order to have a grip of market share of Asda is
limiting its profit margins in order to stay in the competitive market and give a tough
fight to its competitors.
 Threat of Substitution: In relation to Asda, the threat of substitution is considerably
low. This is because the customers are not going to stop consuming food and daily based
products and competitors are not providing as affordable prices as Asda in the retail
industry (McCarthy, Eastman and Garets, 2021). Threat of New Entrants: In relation to Asda, threat relating to the entry of new entrant
is considered to be low because it will require huge investment, a lot of time and brand
development cost to reach at higher levels to compete Asda (SAYYADI, 2021).
Importance of change management based on the transformation process, cost, risk and its
sustainability
Organisational strategies
Asda is looking for setting their activities in private hands during the time period of
October 2020, at that time Walmart agreed the income in UK and make impelling global comfort
and forecourts the retail enterprise of EG group and its founder the Issa brothers. Asda strategy
for fighting with Novel coronavirus and make systematic approaches to analyse the system and
make sure for expecting the need of Q2 in 2021 (Asda's strategies for 2021). All of this is needed
for Asda to make a change in their environment and able to manage their suitability on the basis
of change management (McCarthy, Eastman and Garets, 2021).
Organisational change management and its importance on the basis of transformation
process
Organisational change management is beneficial for completing different actions in
which the company alter the different perspective. This is related to analyse the system and make
changes for operating the internal process and external as well for the organisation.
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Organisational change is important for the company as it will be helpful for getting succeed and
grow in the market. This process allows the employees to analyse different situation and
understand the process for committing shifts and work effectively during the sales process. This
will be helpful for challenging nature of change management and it helps in analysing the growth
of transformational process (Hubbard and Curran, 2021). Asda, make the change management
for the growth in appropriate processing in an effective way with the help of transformation
process and make changes as per the growth in analysing strategies.
Transformation process
This is the process that deals with any type of activities and it may take more time than
inputs, transform the process and provide the output for the customers. This process is related to
changes in management, location, ownership, accommodation on the state of their customers.
The need to complete working with change management and enable the process for getting an
effective process to apply change management to work and grow within the market. The major
importance of the change management is related to transformation process. It is needed to be
considered on the different basis like cost, risk and sustainability.
Cost: With the help of transformation process, it is analysed that the positive change is
applied to the process and gain concepts to reduce the waste management. Effective change
management will be helpful for the growth of smart decision and its choices. All is helpful for
major challenges and to make an increase productivity, decrease the impact of costs and improve
the profitability within the organisation level (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2021). Asda, using
appropriate major challenges for analysing cost effective process during the transformation
analysis.
Risk: The use of right change management adoption that is helpful for considering the
right usage within the organisation. This process with the effective transformation process leads
to analyse the process and decline the risk factors of the company. Asda is using different type of
risks such as high resistance, lack of awareness, lack of stakeholders’ commitment and risk
management.
Sustainability: With the help of sustainable approaches and consistent transformation for
the growth of organisational change, goals, process and developed different technologies in the
market (Aragão and et.al., 2021). Asda is using effective process to use helpful consideration
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analysing the sustainable options and applied to the systematic changes in the organisation for
their future growth.
Conclusion
From the above report, it is concluded that there are different external and internal
sources has been used to manage the strategic changes in the organisation. This report includes
the different management perspective with Pestle analysis for analysing the external factors.
Whereas, the use of porter's five forces analyse the competitive forces of the company they make
appropriate advantages in the retail industry. And in last, the impact of VRIO has analysed to
work on the internal factors the respective environment. This will be helpful for gaining
company's environment and overcome the challenges for analysing the situation and make
systematic growth on the company's internal and external decisions.
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References
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