Competitive Advantage of Greggs: Strategies for Market Success

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of Greggs, a leading bakery retail chain, focusing on its competitive advantage in the market. It explores Greggs' market position, strategies, and functional areas such as marketing, finance, operations, and human resources. The essay delves into how Greggs differentiates itself from competitors like Starbucks and Costa Coffee, examining its cost and differentiation advantages. It highlights Greggs' marketing strategies, including word-of-mouth, social media, and supply chain management. The essay also discusses the importance of effective management decision-making, functional area collaboration, and resource management in achieving competitive advantage. Furthermore, it examines Greggs' responses to market changes, its investment strategies, and the importance of continuous research and analysis. The conclusion emphasizes the significance of understanding competitive advantage for business success and the need for companies to offer unique value and quality at affordable prices. The essay provides insights into Greggs' business model, strategies, and future potential in the competitive food and beverage industry.

Competitive advantage of
Greggs

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Essay ...............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Competitive analysis has become important and necessary for every industry to
understand their current strength, future expectancy and potential to perform more
better and efficient with the product (Berger and Roman, 2015). This essay will about
the competitive advantage and future potential for Greggs which is the leading bakery
retail chain and also deals in the coffee products. This company is headquartered in
United Kingdom in the year 1939. This assessment will talk about how organisation
position themselves as according to their current abilities and potential in the market,
This assessment will also talk about measures could taken to increase competitive
advantage and profitability in the market. Apart from this, this essay will give clear-cut
understanding of what functional area's such as marketing, finance, operation and
human resource. This assessment will tell what makes a brand more different from
others.
Essay
Greggs is the largest bakery chain which is specializes in food products such as
bakes, sandwiches and sausage and desserts such as vanilla slice, doughnuts and
sugar muffins etc. There main operations also lies in the coffee serving sector to their
customer. It was identified that Greggs coffee product's has been increased a lot and
gain market reputation and customer experience for different taste and flavour etc. This
retail chain started their operation in the basic bakery products such as puff's and
burger, but they expanded their business by 50 percent in last two decades. Now a
days, beverages are highly used products in café's, restaurants an other bakery setup.
Market has become competitive for every organisation in this specific sector.
Along with Greggs, there are other major players such as Starbucks, Costa
Coffee and Cafe Nero, who are operating with same motive to gain competitive
advantage and find opportunities for future expansion. Starbucks is the largest coffee
chain across the globe and its position and stand for expanding their business with
cutting down market share of other brands is very visionary. Hence, Greggs needs to
understand potential and realize customer needs from the coffee chain. Competitive

advantage and strong market position can be gained by offering larger value to the
customer than their competitors either at the lower prices or provide effective and
utilized quality of the products & services. Greggs has position themselves on the basis
of what quality of coffee product, they are offering and what is the satisfaction level of
their customer
When it comes to analyse competitors, Greggs has adopted several strategies
such as realize what other company are offering to their customer and what is the core
level of service with post evaluation policies such as feedback, opinion and views etc.
Positioning is the process of establishing an image or identity of the brand or any
product so that particular customer it in an positive and proper way. In context with
Greggs, they have put emphasize on analysing the internal environment of an
organisation and its impact on customer engagement in their outlets. Such analysis can
be possible with the help of VRIO model which says about the importance of the
company's resources which will enhance their potential in their services and products to
enhance maximum customer experience and response. Greggs offers main popular
coffee products such as Brazilian coffee, cold coffee and hot coffee along with the
snacks and cookies. The term called “Word of Mouth” has been used by Greggs, which
means, if they would make positive thinking and experience to the customer, the
chances are relatively high that satisfied customer will create Word of mouth to other
people to use that product even once. This strategy has been proven correct and
suitable for organisations who are working hospitality and food & beverage industry. On
other side, they have adopted strategies such as search engine optimization, attracting
and influencing people through social media platform such as Facebook and Instagram
etc. Also, their distribution and supply chain management has improved a lot to make
availability of their coffee's products more ease and satisfactory. Greggs provides their
customer way and chance to realize and decided, what they are looking for. All these
strategies are adopted by Greggs to position themselves to build their brand image and
customer's positive response for their coffee products. For effective competitive
advantage, Greggs Plc needs to follow proper and effective management decision
making. An organisation can achieve competitive advantage in their business by two
different ways: Greggs could perform and change in PEST factor such as political,

economical, social and technological etc. This can be possible by the help of making
rules and regulation to co-operate with affecting and continues change in business
policies and rules (de Oliveira Teixeira and Werther Jr, 2013). For effective positioning
itself, Greggs uses competitive advantage methods namely cost advantage and
differentiation advantage. Cost advantage generally talks about the similar product at
the much lower prices. In context with Greggs, they have lower down the price of their
existing coffee products along with giving several discounts and offer on such products.
On the other side, they also gives preference to the differentiation advantage. They are
selling premium Uganda based which is regarded most costlier product. Hence, it is
termed as premium product.
They sold their existing product such as black forest coffee which is regarded as
the premium product with the hot chocolate. They are charging 70 pound for it. Hence,
this product would help Greggs to compete and fight with other brand such as
Starbucks, Cafe Nero, Costa Coffee etc. Along with this, they are also position
themselves on the basis of how they respond to the particular customer in very shorter
period of time(Martínez‐del‐Río, 2016).
In order to gain competitive position, they are working together with full support of
their functional area such as Human resource, marketing, finance and operation
management etc. In context with Greggs, every functional Dept. should work in the
collaboration to achieve their desired goals efficiently. Marketing is one of the most
effective and functional area when there is requirement to gain competitive position.
Operation and marketing area of Greggs both should work in collaboration to receive
competitive advantage such as cost advantage, value proposition to the brand and
services delivery at the fullest etc. First of all, every activities related to the
development of the brand, a key resource is required that is “potential workforce: which
is the duty of human resource Dept. In Greggs, operational task such as service quality
management, checking the inventory level and managing operation workforce in order
to gain perfect position in discovering products and services to get competitive
advantage in the market. Combination of marketing and human resource department
will be suitable to hire skilled and effective employee's and manpower to assign them
task to enhance brand image and position in the market. Greggs is required to manage

finance to open few of their bakery along with the coffee cafe to gain competitive
advantage of their competitors. The initial requirement of the finance would be £40000
and funds flow will depends on the minimum return on finance raised (Chen and Li,
2013). Resource management is the effective technique and methods to circulate
resources and material during the time of production or coffee making process. In
Greggs, it is the duty of the operation manager to maintain the customer flow and
customer services to build positive image/reputation of the brand. In accordance with
competitive advantage, it is most important task to gain value addition to the coffee
product. In context with Greggs, their marketing unit have assigned the task to establish
brand image and value proposition by doing various marketing activities such as
advertisement, sales promotion and customer response scanning by evaluating the
social media and methods. Greggs operation department needs to look at customer
service by providing them pure and satisfactory products.
Greggs uses innovative techniques such as maximum use of technology, In-store
display for different variety of coffee, e-payment gateway and electronic ordering
through Mobile Apps. This has made services more ease and led customer satisfaction
at their main priority. Greggs has adopted the strategies to hire most skilled and
talented manpower through internal and external recruitment techniques. As, Starbucks
is the leading coffee retail chain and also they have skilled and highly professional staff
who treat their customer in the most appropriate and suitable manner to raise customer
satisfaction and fair experience. Greggs is the leading bakery retail chain in entire
United Kingdom, but they are focusing on getting competencies and business strength
to at-least cover break even point to ensure maximum and subsequent. There products
are different from Starbucks, Cafe Nero etc. They provides coffee cup along with
crunchy snacks and spices. Still, their services are not optimized as compared with
Starbucks, they are currently in the stage of business and services expansion by
bringing innovation and creativity in their process.
They uses Word of Mouth strategy to enhance more customer engagement and
motivation to buy and purchase Greggs coffee product. In the current business
scenario, it has proven right that when one person communicates to the other person, it
will sound impressive and motivating to at-least try once. Greggs perceives value

addition by taking feedback, opinion and views of the customer by paper and electronic
forms. They believes in understanding and responding their customer's through digital
communication such as Email marketing, SMS, websites and mobile apps etc. (Roman,
2015) There continuous focus lies on doing frequent research and analysis about their
existing customer or scope for new base of people and also targets them through strong
and white water sales promotion. Promotion such as weekly coupons, discount and
cashback has led customer move to the brand and its related product and services.
Greggs Plc have respond the market in both positive and negative manner. In
positive, where new product has been introduced by the company and on the same
hand, new competitors has been arise for Cafe Nero and Costa Coffee etc. In response
to this, still Greggs needs to implement strategic planning to tackle the big brand like
Starbucks, who is still leading the coffee and beverages market by promoting their
products and services on the global level and stages. They uses effective customer
satisfaction and experience approach in which they use to regular feedbacks and review
from the customers. In the recent years, Greggs has made investment and funds to
acquire other local coffee outlets.
This strategies has led them earning existing customer base and strength of the
acquired coffee outlets. The benefits is that, in case of monopoly, this decision making
would give Greggs to deal with any kind of consequences such as loss making to the
existing coffee outlets and stores, break even analysis, improper resources allocation
etc. In context with Greggs, organisation needs to be well-equipped with proper
strategies and plan to enhance competitive advantage and business expansion of the
company. Also, company needs to implement policies to take and receive price and
cost advantage.

Conclusion
From the above assessment, it is concluded that understanding competitive
advantage of company is important to know current and future potential to raise and
enhance business and its suitability for the longer period of time. Functional area such
as marketing, human resource, finance and operation have to work in collaboration to
find and understanding the requirement. In my opinion, companies needs to unique and
separate from other brands. Such uniqueness should be noticed from company's
products & Services and effective quality to the customer and at the affordable cost and
prices. In my opinion, it is also concluded that competitive advantage and enhancing the
potential is required to maintain and carry on with value addition and effective quality to
the customer.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
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social responsibility‐driven opportunities in competitive advantages: a two‐dimensional
model. Knowledge and Process Management. 20(1). pp.50-58.
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