Holmes Institute HI6006: Competitive Strategy - Strategy Tools Essay

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of competitive strategy and strategic development tools. It begins by highlighting the importance of strategic planning and its role in business growth. The essay then delves into three key strategic development tools: PESTLE analysis, SWOT analysis, and Porter's Five Forces model. PESTLE analysis is described as a tool for determining various factors affecting business sustainability, with a detailed breakdown of political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors, and a specific application to the Coles Group Limited. SWOT analysis is presented as a technique for evaluating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, again with an application to Coles Group Limited. Porter's Five Forces model is discussed as a tool for analyzing industry competition, with an examination of the five forces and their impact on the Coles Group. The essay concludes by emphasizing the benefits of these competitive strategies for organizational performance and provides relevant references.

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Competitive Strategy

Strategy 2
The strategic development tools are important tools for the business organization.
These tools provide effective management in the organization and improve the overall
growth of the business. The strategic planning is one of the important planning process
used in the business. This essay includes the use of strategic development tools in the
organization that creates many changes in the betterment and proper growth of the
business. The strategic development tools play a significant role in the overall process
of the business and increase the proper system of working in the business (Madsen and
Walker, 2015). The strategic management tools help a business to figure out the self-
growth in the next few years. These tools give the proper graph of the business to
improve the overall progress of the organization. The planning is very essential for the
organization as it decides the particular future of the company and increases the overall
process of the business. The strategic development tools are pestle analysis, SWOT
analysis, porter 5 forces, generic strategies, Ansoff matrix and many more. All these
tools are very essential for the overall organization. These tools are described below in
detail.
Pestle Analysis
Pestle analysis is a strategic management tool, which used to determine the various
factors of the business to increase sustainability in the business. This tool is also used
to monitor the various environmental factors, which improves the better performance of
the business organizations. This strategic management tool is mainly used in the
starting process of business. This tool is also used to maintain the process of
international business and get proper growth in the international market. Pestle analysis
defines the political factors, economic factors, social factors, technological factors,
environmental factors, and legal factors. All these factors play an important role in the
organizational performance so it is necessary to determine all these factors for the
betterment of the company (Yuksel, 2012). The political factors are very important for
the business as it decides the customer's perspectives, which is greatly related to the
organization. As the government of a country decides the economic conditions of a

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business and it is the main part of the business growth. The certain political factors like
corruption, foreign trade, tax policy and many more largely affected the business.
Economic factors determine the economic performance of the business, which includes
inflation rates, exchange rates, interest rates and many more. Social factors affect the
customers of the business as they are all connected to the societal factors (Bell and
Rochford, 2016). Technology also plays a significant role in the business so
technological factors also related to the business.
Pestle Analysis of Coles Group Limited
Political Factors: The main political factor of the Coles Group is the regulations of
government against the duopolistic nature of the market. This factor can highly be
effected by the supermarket business of Coles Group The supermarket of Australia
controls the main shares and makes the market duopolistic (Yuksel, 2012). The
government of Australia needs to control this duopoly and remove the political barriers
for the business and helps the business to achieve better growth in the market. This
process can also decrease competition in the market.
Economic Factors: The economic factors of the Coles Group is the low spending of
Australian customers as they become more sensitive towards the price of the products.
The customers decrease their shopping habits due to the economic downturn in
Australia (Dobbs, 2014). Due to this factor, the Coles Group decided to decrease the
price of the products to attract customers towards the organization. The other economic
factor of this organization is the bargaining power of suppliers decreasing largely.
Social Factors: The social factors are all elated with the perception of the customers,
which is very important for organizational performance. The social factors of the Coles
Group Limited are that organization attained the Fairtrade Retail Chain of the year,
which related to the social factors of the organization.
Technological Factors: The technological factors of Coles Group are the increasing
use of the internet in business, self-check-out process, use of cloud infrastructure in the
process and contactless payment facilities.

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Environmental Factors: Sustainability is one of the main factor related to the
environment of the Coles Group, which is very significant to maintain (Bell and
Rochford, 2016). The other factor of this organization is to make the supermarkets eco-
friendly.
Legal Factors: The legal factors of Coles Group are to take the legal actions of ACCC
against the Coles and the call for the strict mandatory codes.

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SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is also one of the strategic management tools that used for determining
the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of the business organization to
improve the organizational performance and maintains the better growth of the
organization (Cagliano, et. al., 2015). It is one of the best strategic planning technique
that helps the business to achieve specific goals or objectives. This process can also
evaluate the competitive position of the company evaluated easily. All the internal and
external factors also used in this process.
SWOT analysis of Coles Group Limited
Strengths
 This organization is the second-
best grocery store in Australia.
 This business is environment-
friendly and sustainability
 The organization provides cost-
saving products and services (Menga, et.
al., 2015).
 They sold used by the business
are indigenous
 The CSR of the business is
effective to maintain the growth
Weakness
 The weakness of Coles Group is
the problems created by the suppliers of
the business
 The several management issues
are created in the business activities that
are also involved in the weakness of the
business
Opportunities
 The main opportunity of the
organization is the completely private
Threats
 The main threat of the Coles
Group is related to the laws and

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label strategy
 The opportunities for the insurance
and finance sector improves the stability
of the organization
 The Newmarket scanning also
comes in one of the opportunities of
Coles Group
 By the national liquor market, there
is a lot of growth opportunity occurred
regulations that are difficult to manage
 The other main threat is the
competition increases in the market that
decreases the growth of the organization
(Gurel and Tat, 2017).
 The change in spending habits in
customers is also responsible to
decrease the growth of the business.
 The brand identity is also one of
the major threat by which the organization
decreases its performance in the market
sector of the supermarket.

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Porter's five forces model
This is also a strategic management tool is used to determine the competition in the
business sector. The Porter five forces also used to determine the weakness of industry
and improve the overall process of the business in a particular market. It also improves
the economy of the business and increases the profitability and attractiveness of the
organization. The competitive environment analyzed with the framework of porter five
forces. The elements of the forces improve the competitive advantage and improve the
business strategy (Rajasekar and Al Raee, 2013). The five forces are a threat of new
entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, the threat of
substitute products and rivalry among existing firms.

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Five forces model of Coles
Coles Group used Porter's five forces, which ultimately increase the profit potential of
the business. Better strategic decisions analyzed by the organization with the help of
this model. The description of five forces are described below-
The threat of New Entrants
The economies of scale are very difficult to achieve in the industry and it makes the
process easier and gain the cost advantage. This process makes the products costly for
the new entries and makes the force weaken (Dalken, 2014). The new entrants feel
difficulty to set high expenditures and cannot achieve the capital requirements.
Bargaining power of suppliers
As per the information, it analyzed that the suppliers are more as compared to buyers.
Therefore, the suppliers cannot control the prices and make the suppliers weak. The
bargaining power of suppliers becomes weak as per the various process of business.
Bargaining power of buyers
The number of suppliers in the Coles is more as compared to the products of the firm.
Therefore, the buyers have options to adopt a new firm and the bargaining power of
buyers become weak. Therefore, to attract the buyers towards the firm, the Coles
organization can focus on the innovation process.
The threat of substitute products and services
There are very few substitutes for the products in the organization Coles. The profit
becomes low due to the various products and services and this can improve the overall
process of the substitution regarding products and services (Dobbs, 2014).
Rivalry among existing firms

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The competitors are very few for the Coles organization. Therefore, the rivalry among
existing firms become weakens force in the industry. When there are fewer competitors
then there is more market share for the Coles organization.
This essay describes the competitive strategy of the business, which is very beneficial
for organizational performance. The essay includes a description of the pestle analysis,
which includes the various factors involved in the organization. This analysis improves
the overall performance of the organization. The essay includes the SWOT analysis,
which helps to determine the strengths and weakness of the Coles organization that
helps in managing the overall performance of the organization. Porter's five forces help
in determining the competitive environment and all of these forces helps in increasing
the growth of the particular organization.

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References
Bell, G.G., and Rochford, L., (2016). Rediscovering SWOT's integrative nature: A new
understanding of an old framework. The International Journal of Management
Education, 14(3), pp.310-326.
Bryson, J.M., (2015). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations. In
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition (pp.
515-521). Elsevier Inc...
Cagliano, A.C., Grimaldi, S. and Rafele, C., (2015). Choosing project risk management
techniques. A theoretical framework. Journal of Risk Research, 18(2), pp.232-248.
Dälken, F., (2014). Are Porter's five competitive forces still applicable? A critical
examination concerning the relevance for today's business (Bachelor's thesis,
University of Twente).
E. Dobbs, M., (2014). Guidelines for applying Porter's five forces framework: a set of
industry analysis templates. Competitiveness Review, 24(1), pp.32-45.
Gürel, E. and Tat, M., (2017). SWOT analysis: A theoretical review. Journal of
International Social Research, 10(51).
Madsen, T.L. and Walker, G., (2015). Modern competitive strategy. New York: McGraw
Hill.
Menga, E., Dan, A., Lu, J. and Liu, X., (2015). Ranking alternative strategies by SWOT
analysis in the framework of the axiomatic fuzzy set theory and the ER approach.
Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 28(4), pp.1775-1784.
Rajasekar, J. and Al Raee, M., (2013). An analysis of the telecommunication industry in
the Sultanate of Oman using Michael Porter's competitive strategy model.
Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal, 23(3), pp.234-259.

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Yüksel, I., (2012). Developing a multi-criteria decision-making model for PESTEL
analysis. International Journal of Business and Management, 7(24), p.52.