Strategic Management Report: Woolworths' Strategies Analysis

This report analyzes the strategic management practices of Woolworths, a leading Australian retailer. The report begins with an introduction to Woolworths and its strategic approach, highlighting its focus on customer satisfaction and profitable growth. It details the six primary elements of Woolworths' strategy, emphasizing customer-centric processes, product differentiation, innovation, and a personalized shopping experience. The report examines the company's strategic planning process, emphasizing its customer insights, data-driven approaches, and supply chain management. It discusses Woolworths' competitive advantages, including its brand trust, customer loyalty, and expansion into online retailing. The report also touches upon the company's challenges, such as pricing issues. The analysis includes an overview of strategic management theories and frameworks, and an engaging explanation of each strategy linked with infographics. Finally, the report concludes by summarizing key strategic elements and suggesting avenues for future business growth.

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Table of Contents
1. Welcoming Statements.....................................................................................2
2. Introduction...................................................................................................2
3. Summary of the process to produce the organisation’s strategy....................................3
4. Engaging explanation of each strategy linked with infographics...................................4
5. Conclusion....................................................................................................6
6. References.....................................................................................................7

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1. Welcoming Statements
Hey Guys, I am here to welcome you in this session so that we can discuss the
importance of strategic management. We have been discussing models and theories of strategic
management previously, but I wanted us all to discuss individual perspective related to this
theme. I believe that aligning our understanding with a strategic management model with real-
life examples; I will outline models with an example of Woolworth's as it is my favourite
companies in Australia. I think that the company’s strategic approach is its core, and it has
helped the management to gain a competitive advantage.
2. Introduction
I have taken Woolworth to shape my discussion; I believe that the company is worthy of
being used as an example. It is not only successfully working towards customer satisfaction, but
it is also following a flexible yet profitable strategic approach. Woolworths Group is a perfect
example to build a platform growth for the future (Methner et al., 2015). The six primary
elements of Woolworth's strategy is focused on E2E processes to plan better services for
customers and simplify its store process. It has worked on differentiating their food product with
customer proposition, accelerate innovation in its business, and unlock value portfolio. The last
two elements are working to connect, personalise, and convenient shopping experience, which
supports customer first team culture (Nakandala & Lau, 2019).
Another reason I would recommend Woolworths because it is working to transform
Australia and New Zealand’s Food industry with continued improvement in customer scores. It
has been working towards 80 renewals and 54 upgrades. It is also working towards investing the
New Zealand Food by improving customers and sales outcomes after its new Managing Director

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was appointed. Recently, the company has worked on increasing its online presence. The growth
was recorded 30% following its investment in Australia and New Zealand food (May 2019).
3. Summary of the process to produce the organisation’s strategy
I have researched about the six-dimensional strategy of Woolworths, which has helped its
management to work on Group level to deliver future-fit business. I believe that diversity in
strategic management has helped the management to work on long-term profitable growth and
develop a sustainable value for its stakeholders. I have learned that working with such a strategic
approach helps a company to dominate the market. It is extremely important for companies such
as Woolworths to plan its strategies to beat the competition with Coles, Aldi, IGA, and Costco
wholesale only in Australia (Zutshi et al., 2016). The core competency of Woolworths is based
on the distribution channel; the brand is trusted by thousands of people in Australia and other
parts of the company, which reduce the risk towards its investment. I think that it is a very smart
approach to Woolworth or any competitive company to work on its existing strategies to support
it's business and competition. The firm's key approach is working with clear customer insight,
data drive, and approaches to enhance customer loyalty; the brand can be easily named as
customer obsessed group as they have built their industry position over it (Naidoo & Gasparatos,
2018).
I think that the company is offering, inspiring, engaging, and working to offer a digital
and in-store journey to help the firm deliver a consistent brand positioning to experience and
connect its customers any all-available platforms. This particular approach of the company helps
its management to define ideal services for customers using available format, channel, services,
and others to drive its sales. The differentiating approach adopted by Woolworth has helped its

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customers to shop within a single roof (Phillipov, 2019). The strategy of Woolworth is not only
supported with strategic management theory and approaches, but the success of Woolworth is
based on the world-class supply chain, its branding and marketing, innovation and integration to
support strong financial performance. They are involved in a good relationship with its suppliers.
Currently, they are also expanding online retailing to work on the growth opportunity in organic
products and services. The company has a strict pricing policy. Therefore, it is facing some
issues in its pricing approach (Smith & Lawrence, 2018).
The strategic positioning of the company is driven by its customers to work on the
superior quality of flavour, safe, and innovative food at a great value. Furthermore, the company
is leveraging its group in the Southern Hemisphere, especially in Australia. It is working towards
business operations to drive its strategic efficiencies to maintain a cost control approach, which
further adds value to its profitability (Phillipov, 2016). The business journey encompasses its
stakeholders at all level. The business journey facilities have helped the firm to seek its vision to
become a responsible retailer around the work. If I were given an opportunity to plan a strategic
management approach for any company, I would follow the approach of Woolworth to seek a
competitive advantage. I can compare the industry position of Tesco in the UK with Woolworths
in Australia, and it is all because of the customer-driven approach taken into consideration by
both companies (Rajabian Tabesh et al., 2016).
4. Engaging explanation of each strategy linked with infographics
The infographics clearly state the information associated with the business of Woolworth;
it has to work towards a clear vision and mission statement, identify its historical performance,
and evaluate its internal and external environment to look forward to understanding the key

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strategies and initiatives. It is working towards the implementation challenges ahead of the
company in its current position. It has also discussed the measures of strategic success related to
the strategy, along with its approach to discussing the whole process of management and
strategic formation (Morioka et al., 2016). I believe that it is important for organisations such as
Woolworth to plan their strategies following cost leader culture. This approach will help the
organisation to cut down its operational cost to follow just-in-time strategy. Furthermore, the
strategic alliance adopted by Woolworth help the organisation to take full advantage of its
strategy to combine the alliance with a reward program approach (Morioka et al., 2016).
Furthermore, product proliferation is considered on diversification to develop its
resources to work on acquisitions in providing a new range of products and services in different
markets. In addition, the people-focused development approach help Woolworth to improvise its
human resource and capabilities to achieve their goals and objectives to control and manage
people of a different culture to work on the biggest challenge for the firm (Nakandala & Lau,
2019). The overall approach helps the company to work on a customer perspective and give an
exposure to its products and services feeling confident with its products and services to consider
bulk-packages to maintain its popularity in service criteria. The whole criteria are focused on the
transformation to work on the diversity with its employees and supply chain. The contribution is
focused on social development to build for a better future of the team. Furthermore, uphold
social, ethical, and environmental standard help the organisation to source their products and
services (Rajabian Tabesh et al., 2016).

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5. Conclusion
For the concluding statements, I think that we have covered the example of Woolworth in
quite a detail. I have been working with strategic management models and frameworks for long.
Hence I can outline the basic elements of Woolworth strategies. The firm is using a broad
strategic management approach to deliver its planned services, elements, communication
channels, and others.
We are looking forward to undertaking more examples in Australia business industry to follow
the standards in only one region. It will support the team to understand the role of strategic
management with different models, theories, and frameworks to outline their success and
improvise their position in the industry.

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6. References
May, P., 2019. Get smarter: Why smarter warehouses demand smarter risk strategies. MHD
Supply Chain Solutions, 49(2), p. 20 Retrieved from
https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=268264592020892;res=IELBUS;t
ype=pdf
Methner, N., Hamann, R. & Nilsson, W., 2015. The evolution of a sustainability leader: The
development of strategic and boundary spanning organisational innovation capabilities in
Woolworths. In The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation, pp. 87-104
Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-04051-6_5
Morioka, S., Evans, S. & de Carvalho, M., 2016. Sustainable business model innovation:
exploring evidence in sustainability reporting. Procedia CIRP, Volume 40, pp. .659-667
Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212827116001669
Naidoo, M. & Gasparatos, A. .., 2018. Corporate Environmental Sustainability in the retail
sector: Drivers, strategies and performance measurement. Journal of cleaner production
Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652618326040
Nakandala, D. & Lau, H., 2019. Innovative adoption of hybrid supply chain strategies in the
urban local fresh food supply chain. Supply Chain Management: An International
Journal, 24(2), pp. .241-255 Retrieved from
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/SCM-09-2017-0287
Phillipov, M., 2016. ‘Helping Australia Grow’: supermarkets, television cooking shows, and the
strategic manufacture of consumer trust. Agriculture and human values, 33(3), pp. 587-
596 Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-015-9643-6
Phillipov, M., 2019. Supermarkets, television cooking shows, and integrated advertising: New
approaches to strategic marketing and consumer engagement. In Case Studies in Food
Retailing and Distribution, pp. 255-265 Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081020371000177
Rajabian Tabesh, A., Batt, P. & Butler, B., 2016. Modelling the impact of environmental and
organisational determinants on green supply chain innovation and performance. Journal
of food products marketing, 22(4), pp. 436-454 Retrieved from
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10454446.2014.949987
Smith, K. & Lawrence, G., 2018. From disaster management to adaptive governance?
Governance challenges in achieving resilient food systems in Australia. Journal of
environmental policy & planning, 20(3), pp. 387-401 Retrieved from
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1523908X.2018.1432344
Zutshi, A., Creed, A., Holmes, M. & Brain, J., 2016. Reflections of environmental management
implementation in furniture. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management,
44(8), pp. 840-859 Retrieved from
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJRDM-10-2015-0154