Strategic Planning and Analysis for Wesfarmers Agribusiness

This report offers a comprehensive strategic analysis of Wesfarmers, a major Australian multi-service provider. It delves into the firm's operational issues, particularly in light of its international expansion. The analysis includes an examination of the company's vision and mission statements, objectives, and both external and internal factors influencing its performance. Key methodologies employed include Porter's Five Forces, SWOT analysis, stakeholder analysis, and Porter's value chain analysis. The report identifies critical strategic issues and proposes an action plan for the coming year, with recommendations for leveraging market dominance, expanding into new markets, introducing cost advantages, and emphasizing innovation through HRM and CSR strategies. The conclusion underscores the need for Wesfarmers to adapt to market dynamics and focus on sustainable growth.

Running head: AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Agribusiness strategy
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author note

1AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Table of Contents
Executive summary:........................................................................................................................2
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................4
Vision and Mission Statements:......................................................................................................5
Objectives of the strategy:...............................................................................................................6
Analysis of external factors:............................................................................................................7
Porter’s Five Force analyses:.......................................................................................................8
Analysis of internal factors:.............................................................................................................9
SWOT analysis:.........................................................................................................................10
Stakeholder analysis:.................................................................................................................11
Porter’s value chain analysis:....................................................................................................12
Identification, evaluation and selection of strategies:....................................................................13
Key strategic issues:......................................................................................................................15
Action plan for next one year:.......................................................................................................16
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................16
Reference:......................................................................................................................................18

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Executive summary:
Strategic planning is one of the essential and integral parts of conducting business operation. It is
important for the business firms in order to assess their strength and weakness and portray
strategic planning for mitigating the same. This report is made based on the Wesfarmers, which
is one of the largest multi service provider firms in Australia. Owing to the rise in magnitudes of
operation and exposure to the international market, there are various operational issues with the
business process of the firm. This report is aimed to discuss those issues and provide strategic
planning for future while analysing the external and internal factor as well as the environmental
factors at the present situation. Wesfarmers is one of the largest conglomerate, which has it’s
headquarter in Perth and it predominantly present in the countries like New Zealand and
Australia. When it comes to the mission statement of the firm, then it aims to maintain highest
ethical standards in the industry that makes it one of the best multinational brands. According to
the researchers, the firm’s objective is to develop such a unique, highly focused and disciplined
working culture in its organisational framework. In addition to this, the firm takes
responsibilities of environmental and social development where it operates in order to create
strong bonding with the different communities and government of its operating zone. The
company’s mission for its origin is to bring in platform of equal opportunity to the people who
works with the firm and attached with the organisation through business management or by the
workplace of the organization through management process. In conclusion it can be stated that
the firm has no real threat or key issues from external factors; however there is threat from the
internal factors. With continuous market dominance in the present markets, the firm fails to lure
any new customer base in the Australia and New Zealand; thus it has been found that the firm
need to expand its business to the foreign nations too.

3AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Wesfarmers need to take advantage of the developing market by opening up new stores in those
areas. In addition to this the report suggests that it would be ultimate requirement for the firm to
introduce cost advantage mechanism in new operating zones while keeping up with the social
and corporate sustainability. Besides this for the next ten years the firm need the vanguard of
innovation by taking advantage of further store renewal opportunities, supply chain
transformation and a strategic approach to improved operational efficiencies and continued fund
reinvestment in price. In addition to this it would be ideal for the firm to introduce good HRM
strategy as well as CSR strategy for the firm that will aid the firm to have better future prospect.
The company also needs to focus in the area of motivational factors and leadership style for the
employees.

4AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Introduction:
Strategic planning is one of the essential and integral parts of conducting business
operation that refers to the development and execution of the strategies in order to hold the
company’s growth and let it have sustainability in future (Grant 2016). This report is made based
on the Wesfarmers, which is one of the largest multi service provider firms in Australia.
However, it can be seen that the firm has extended its operation beyond the geographical
boundary. Selected firm has been introduced back in 1914 with the service in agricultural
merchandise; however, over the time it has transformed itself to become where it is now
(Campbell 2017). During 2007, the firm has introduced its retail business and other operations
allowing it to grow bigger in future days (Thompson 2014). Over the time it has further
subdivided its business and let it grow further to become one of the largest retailers in the world.
Owing to the rise in magnitudes of operation and exposure to the international market, there are
various operational issues with the business process of the firm (Kilroy and Schneider 2017).
This report is aimed to discuss those issues and provide strategic planning for future while
analysing the external and internal factor as well as the environmental factors at the present
situation. When it comes to choosing proper strategies and plan for the growth of business
operation while keeping up with the Corporate Social Responsibility, then it is essential to
acknowledge the mission and vision statement at the beginning level and moving forward it is
essential to provide key strategic issues (Wang 2017). In this same fashion, the report will
highlight the mission and vision statement of the Wesfarmers along with highlighting the key
issues of the firm. To conclude the report will provide action plan for next one year and it will
portray the summarised overview regarding strategic planning of the chosen firm.

5AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Vision and Mission Statements:
Wesfarmers is one of the largest conglomerate, which has it’s headquarter in Perth and it
predominantly present in the countries like New Zealand and Australia (Hubard et al. 2014). The
brand has well reputation in the operating countries due to their aim to always perform their
business with the satisfactory level of return to the shareholders and providing higher amount of
consumer preference. In addition to this, the firm always try to enhance their ethical practice in
order to provide their best service to their esteemed customers. When it comes to the mission
statement of the firm, then it aims to maintain highest ethical standards in the industry that makes
it one of the best multinational brands. According to the McKenzie (2014), the firm’s objective is
to develop such a unique, highly focused and disciplined working culture in its organisational
framework. Moreover, the firm not only aimed to achieve high ethical standard among its
shareholder, additionally it always tries to maintain value of the employees, customers, suppliers
and communities where it operates. In addition to this, the firm takes responsibilities of
environmental and social development where it operates in order to create strong bonding with
the different communities and government of its (Stanton 2016) operating zone. The brand
always aims to achieve total economic development of its operating zone through participating in
various socio economic programs. When it comes to its origin, then the Wesfarmers showcase
deep concern about the Australia and New Zealand (Islam et al. 2016). The company’s mission
for its origin is to bring in platform of equal opportunity to the people who works with the firm
and attached with the organisation through business management or by the workplace of the
organization through management process.

6AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Objectives of the strategy:
Wesfarmers is one of the largest conglomerates that operate in various countries around the
world. The vast expanse of business along with the magnitude of business, the firm has specific
set of complexities. In addition to this, growing financialization of the business operation in
present days has made it hard for the organisations to fulfil its entire objective (Bayne et al.
2017). According to the firm’s annual report below are the objective of the firm is as follows:
Vast experience in the business has enabled the firm to understand the importance of the
one customer satisfaction as the key element of business success. Thus the primary
objective of the firm is to provide best in class customer service to their esteemed
customers.
Next to this, the firm tries to maintain the CSR strategies at highest level, thus its
secondary objective is to perform is to standardise its ethical practice that will allow the
firm to keep ahead of its rivals (Date 2015).
Next to keeping the highest CSR practice, it has been showcased that employee wellbeing
along with the wellbeing of the environmental, customer and society are another
objective of the firm.
In order to full fill the desired objectives of the firm it has showcased wide range of strategies
in its financial reports. It has been argued by the firm that the firm has developed stable and
sustainable HRM strategy for its objective implementation (Collings et al.2017). In addition to
this he firm has provided focus on stakeholder wellbeing that will allow strong relationship
between the firm and the stakeholder. In addition to this, it has been argued that firm implements
various strategic implementations to keep it aligned with the CSR practice (Akbar and Ahsan
2014). Besides this, it perform various environmental perform in order to minimize the carbon

7AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
emission along with the waste management program. Besides this, the firm’s objective is to
ensure minimum energy waste to reduce its effective carbon footprint.
Analysis of external factors:
Identifying the external factors that can affect the performance of the firm is highly
essential. One of the largest benefits of external environmental analysis is that it will guide the
firm to understand and evaluate the growth opportunities, competition intensity as well as
strength and weakness of the rival firms (Rothaermel 2016). In this section, the report will
highlight external factors impacting on the firm, including customers, suppliers, governments,
competitors and the other stake holders.
Customer:
From its different outlets Wesfarmers handles 19 million client exchanges in a week
(Beech and Maclntosh 2017). Coles argue that its client centric methodology keeps on enhancing
in effectiveness and profitability, while putting resources into bring down costs, conveying better
quality through its 'Australian First' sourcing approach and building up a more grounded store
base through new store openings and re-establishing existing stores added to it steady income
development as the money related pointers have appeared.
Supplier:
There are more than 2, 00,000 suppliers for the Wesfarmers and one of the key issues
that the firm faces is performance gap in the supplier (Rae et al. 2015). It is hard for the mangers
to keep account of all the suppliers, owing to the large number of service provider is attached
with the firm. Thus, supplier performance measurement is absent and it leads to gap in supplier
performance.

8AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Government: it is important for a firm to maintain strong relationship with the government in
order to have good amount of growth. Considering the case of Wesfarmers, it can be seen that
the firm always tries to keep close contact with the government through various channels in
order to keep it growing (Tamm et al. 2014). Besides this, maintaining government regulations
in the place of operation is another factor that makes the Wesfarmers unique among all the
brands in the organisation.
Competitor:
Though it has been seen that Wesfarmers is a large organisation, yet there is threat from
the competitors. compared to the Wesfarmers, their competitor is no lose, owing to their
magnitude of business, large number of customers and lower input cost. Rival organisations like
MetaCash, Woolworths, and Myer are able enough to pose threats to the sustainability of the
firm.
Moving forward, the report will perform Porter’s Five Force analysis in order to assess
the external factor that can affect the firm’s performance.
Porter’s Five Force analyses:
In order to adopt an effective strategy that can enhance the competitiveness of the
Wesfarmers, Five Forces of Wesfarmers is required. Below is the detailed analysis of the
Porter’s Five Forces.
Threat to the new entrants: LOW
It can be seen that the market segment, where the Wesfarmers is present is highly congested due
to presence of large number of firm and all of them have well established market popularity that
is hard for the new brands to penetrate. Thus threat from the new entrants is low (Barua and
Parveen 2014).

9AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
Supplier power: Medium
Wesfarmers has large number of market share and it enables the firm to have some amount of
power to bargain. However, presence of the close substitute power from the rival firms makes it
hard for the firm to charge monopoly price; thus the firm has medium amount of supplier power.
Buyer’s power: LOW
Large number of buyer is resent in the market and the market is oligopolistic in nature.
Thus the buyers’ power is low.
Competitive rivalry: Medium
The market structure is oligopolistic in nature where many firms operate making it hard
for the Wesfarmers to capture most of the market share. In addition to this, presence of the close
substitute products, make it hard for the firm to avail monopoly pricing. Thus, it can be stated
that the firm has medium amount of rivalry.
Threats of substitute: High
Presence of the close substitute products, make it hard for the firm to avail monopoly pricing. In
addition to this being the close substitute, it is easy for the buyers to shift from Wesfarmers to
other brand leading to high threat from the substitute (Beech and Maclntosh 2016).
Analysis of internal factors:
Analysis of the internal factor cannot be overemphasized because it helps the organisation to
analytically evaluate and comprehend the strategies necessary for the growth and survival of the
organization. This environmental force aids the firm to assess the factors that affect the business
performance (Sullivan and Gouldson 2017). In this section the report will identify and portray
the internal factors of the Wesfarmers with special focus on the impact of the identified factors
on customers, competitors, suppliers, governments and stakeholders. For the internal analysis it

10AGRIBUSINESS STRATEGY
will portray the SWOT analysis and next to this it will utilise the Porter’s value chain model to
assess the threats and opportunities of the firm.
SWOT analysis:
Strength Weakness
Wesfarmers has a diversified market, and the
organisation has wide range of business.
Persistent growth of the firm has sustainable
growth that made it strong enough to withstand
in case of any industry downturn.
The firm is known for its reputation around the
world that has enabled it to have high brand
recognition (De Barcellos et al. 2015).
Exceptionally high growth rate of the firm has
provided it market leader position in the
Australia, which enables it to have wide range
of customers of their diversified product range.
Number of shareholder is as high as 4, 00,000
has aided it to have higher growth (Jensen and
Sonnemann 2014).
Large amount of stakeholder is one of the main
issues that arise in front of the organisation.
Lack of stakeholder program has affects the
firm greatly through lack of performance in the
shareholders (Samson et al. 2017).
Organisation operates in high highly
competitive market that makes it prone to face
high amount of risk from the new entrants.
Though the firm is large and strong enough to
withstand against the financial crisis, however,
in case of nationwide financial recession can
lead it to face reduced revenue due to loss in
aggregate demand (Baur and Miyakawa 2014).
Wesfarmers aims to have highest amount of
environmental rank, however, it is often argued
that the firm does not disclose its CSR data
completely that harms the popularity of the
firm.
Opportunity Threat

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There is vast amount of opportunity in front of
the Wesfarmers. One of the main opportunities
is globalisation through which the firm can
achieve higher amount of customers of their
service, which inherently will lead the revenue
for the firm to a larger amount (Humayun
2016).
Quality of service is their main aim, where
they want to excel to a large extent. Thus,
focusing on the quality frontier of the product
is essential to have better customer satisfaction.
Bringing in CSR practice into the firm’s
framework is another prospect that the firm can
excel.
One of the main threats of the firm is raising
raw price of the raw material that have the
potential to enhance the revenue of the firm.
Rival organisations like MetaCash,
Woolworths, and Myer are able enough to pose
threats to the sustainability of the firm (Wang
2017).
Table 1: SWOT analysis of the Wesfarmers
Source: (Created by the Author)
Stakeholder analysis:
Stakeholder analysis is essential for the large firms like Wesfarmers in order to analyse the
strength, weakness and opportunity of the stakeholders. Selected organisation has large number
of stakeholders who are consumers, government, shareholders, employees and media. The stake
holders can be considered as the main asset of the organisation, thus understanding their
mechanics is highly essential for the sustainable growth of the organisation (Rowe et al. 2014).
From the stakeholder analysis it can be found that the organisation is not only focused to provide