Analyzing Trader Joe's: A Management Case Study on Leadership

This case study analyzes Trader Joe's management practices, focusing on the core functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. It explores how Trader Joe's demonstrates the importance of each responsibility in its business operations, including its unique approach to product selection, employee management, and customer service. The study also examines the risks associated with Trader Joe's international ownership, considering the challenges posed by communication loss and global events. The analysis highlights how these factors can impact the company's performance effectiveness and efficiency. The case study concludes by summarizing the key takeaways, emphasizing the significance of effective business management and the potential challenges of international ownership within the retail sector. The study also references key academic journals and books to support the analysis.

MANAGEMENT CASE
STUDY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
1. In what ways does Trader Joe's demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the
management process—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling?.....................................1
2. Trader Joe's is owned by a German company operating in America. What are the biggest
risks that international ownership and global events pose for Trader Joe's performance
effectiveness and performance efficiency?..................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REREFENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Busines management can be defined as a process though which necessary and important
functions of business are carried out smoothly so that main business objectives can be achieved
smoothly (Sun, 2017). It is extremely important for organizations to manage their business
functions and operations in an effective manner in order to achieve success. Business
management functions also helps in ensuring smoother and effective operability of business
functions for enhancement of revenue and profitability of the organization. This assignment will
lay emphasis upon a management case study of Trader Joe who grew his business with basic
fundamentals of retail management. Two main case study questions that assignment will focus
upon are: ways in which Trader Joe demonstrate management process—planning, organizing,
leading, and controlling importance, and second is biggest risks that international ownership and
global events pose for Trader Joe.
MAIN BODY
1. In what ways does Trader Joe's demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the
management process—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling?
Planning, organizing, leading and controlling are some of the most important functions,
that are required to be carried out all business operations smoothly. Planning is the first step
which is required to be carried out within a business (Nicoara & Nicoara, 2020). It is the first and
the foremost important reason behind success of Trader Joe. Products at Trader Joe supermarket
are available for customers at below average price. Not only this, they have also focused upon
providing unique food products from all over the world with the help of one in and one out
strategy. There are more than 10 new products that are introduced in market every time. So, they
remove products that are least preferred by customers, or whose sales are not good, and only
those products that are in most demand and have shortage in market are included are included.
Not only this, they also provide or sell only healthy products from all over the world to the
customers at lowest price possible. In order to increase customer satisfaction and employee’s job
satisfaction they have includes desired soft skills in their employee’s job description such as:
keep smiling, strong sense of value, ambitious and adventurous. So that their employees can
provide warm and friendly customer service. For enhancement of their employee’s job
satisfaction they provide better packages to their employees as compared to their competitors.
Other than this they provide various kinds of benefits such as medical, dental, and vision
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insurance; company paid retirement; paid vacation; and a 10% employee discount. All of their
planning is completely based upon a simple rule i.e. tasty, healthy and unusual food products
should be made available to customers in lowest possible price.
Organizing skills of Trader Joe can be recognized with their capacity to have different
variety of products within their small spaced store. They deal directly with the stakeholders
involved in the process. It can also be said that directly deal with manufacturers. They have an
uninterpreted organizing skills. They search for tasty, healthy and unusual food items and contact
directly with the manufactures and focuses upon maintaining small stock of each product.
Leading is one of the most important and strongest point of Trader Joe. The main reason
for this is that they focus upon hiring and retaining best employees by providing them higher
packages as compared to their competitors. They also influence their employees so that they can
taste and learn about their products so that they can engage with their customers and enhance
customer experience and satisfaction in an appropriate manner. they have excellent leadership as
they focus upon hiring well-rounded employees who can handle different kin ds of
responsibilities like: stock management, cashier, customer manager. Work of all the employees
is evaluated on quarterly basis in which not only their work but their characteristics, customer
dealing abilities etc. are also evaluated.
Controlling is an important step that comes after planning, organizing, leading (Cutic,
2020). Trader Joe demonstrate their controlling ability by showing coordination between goal
achievement and business functions. They have implemented one in and one out policy so that
they product cost and variety variation can be controlled in a proper and effective manner. If they
want to introduce new product, they remove one product that has high cost, sold poorly, disliked
by customers, or whose cost has been increased drastically with the new product. They try to
manage and control different variety of products within small space though this effective and
appropriate policy.
Through these ways Trader Joe demonstrate importance of each and every type of
responsibility in management process though planning, organizing, leading, and controlling
abilities.
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2. Trader Joe's is owned by a German company operating in America. What are the biggest risks
that international ownership and global events pose for Trader Joe's performance
effectiveness and performance efficiency?
There are various kinds of risk that international ownership and global event pose that are
associated with Trader Joe's performance effectiveness and performance efficiency. One of the
biggest risks is communication loss (Wang-Mlynek & Foerstl, 2020). As owner of the company
is a German company which far from America. This is because every now and then owner has to
contact managers of Trader Joe in order to collect information about productivity of the
organization, problems or issues that are being faced by them and many other issues related
communication. Other than this Owner also need to gather and analyse information related to
different kinds of risk that business can face in future such as economical risk, financial risk etc.
For example: as explained by Witte, Burger & Pennings, 2020) says that, political instability or
any other kinds of negative political action can impact a business and its operability and many
times it can work as a negative publicity for the organization because of which revenue,
profitability and operability of organization can get impacted. As trader joe is owned by a
German company so government already sees it as a threat so it can impact overall operability of
the business. So, from this discussion it can be said that for Trader Joe communication loss is the
biggest risk as the owner is a German company and they need to remain in touch with managers
of Trader Joe continuously and need to gather and analyse all the information obtained by them.
They also need to keep an eye upon all kinds of risk that can impact organization, its
performance, effectiveness and efficiency both positively and negatively. This can further impact
overall operability of the business. If communication loss risk is not focused upon by Trader Joe
then it can negatively impact their performance effectiveness and performance efficiency
drastically.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarized that business management plays a
vital and important role within a business for its effective operability. planning, organizing,
leading, and controlling are some of the most important management processes that not only
helps the organization in its effective operability but also helps in business expansion in an
effective and appropriate manner. all the four management process steps can not only help a
business to grow and expand, but can also help then in enhancing their employees job
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satisfaction and customers experience. From the above case study, it can also be concluded that
there are different kinds of risk that can be faced by an organization if they have international
ownership.
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REREFENCES
Books and Journals
Cutic, D. (2020). Defence Resources Management and Capabilities Building. In Interdisciplinary
Management Research XVI (IMR), Conference Location: Opatija, Croatia, svibanj
07 (Vol. 9, p. 2020).
Nicoara, N., & Nicoara, G. F. (2020). The management functions applied to the logistical
structures of tactical level. In International Scientific Conference" Strategies XXI" (pp.
240-248). " Carol I" National Defence University.
Sun, Z. (2017). A framework for developing management intelligent systems. In Decision
Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 503-521). IGI
Global.
Wang-Mlynek, L., & Foerstl, K. (2020). Barriers to multi-tier supply chain risk
management. The International Journal of Logistics Management.
Witte, C. T., Burger, M. J., & Pennings, E. (2020). When political instability devaluates home-
host ties. Journal of World Business. 55(4). 101077.
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