RMIT University: BUSM3125 Strategic Management Analysis of Woolworths

This report provides a strategic analysis of Woolworths Supermarket, focusing on key challenges and proposing solutions for improved performance. The analysis addresses three primary issues: employee rights, customer retention, and product promotion. The report recommends improving Woolworths' online strategy by providing detailed product information and incorporating gift cards to increase sales and customer satisfaction. It also emphasizes the importance of ethical sourcing, suggesting the adoption of ethical business practices, protection of employee and customer rights, and the use of the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX). Furthermore, the report suggests enhancing campaign and promotion of products by using social media platforms and existing online websites. The report utilizes the Scaled Agile Framework and SWOT analysis to justify the proposed solutions and provides references to support its findings.

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Name
Date
Institution

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Strategic Management
Strategic Solutions
The main reason for the growth of Woolworths Supermarket is based on its
understanding of better management as well as customer satisfaction. This helps it to meet the
actual demands of the Australian market. However, the concept of retailing has been
contemporary changing in the recent years (Seing, et al., 2015, p.1765). This has been attributed
by possibility and scope dynamics which have been as a result of future uncertainties in many
businesses. Due to these dynamics, the management of Woolworths Supermarket has been
putting in place measures that will ensure that they remain competitive in the market while still
offering high quality products to the customers.
Just like any other organization, Woolworths Supermarket understands that customers
are among the major stakeholders in the organization, hence ensuring their satisfaction must be
one of their goals. There are three major issues that Woolworths Supermarket must address.
They include protecting the right of their employees, retaining their customers and issues in
improving campaign and promotion of their products. In this regard; Woolworths Supermarket
has to either adopt new solutions to solve these challenges or improve the current ones.
Improving online Strategy
One of the major goals of Woolworths Supermarket is to increase its market share in
Australia. This means that devising techniques that the organization can use to attract more
customers is inevitable. However, this is not the case in Woolworths Supermarket. Instead of
attracting more customers, there is a risk that the organization may lose the existing customers to
competitors (Salmon et al., 2015, p.115).
Resolution

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Woolworths Supermarket needs to incorporate strategies that will ensure that the number
of customers increases day by day. Woolworths Supermarket should ensure that it improves its
online strategy it uses to sell its products to customers. Improving this strategy will ensure that it
increases customers’ satisfaction.
To improve the online strategy, the marketers as well as the experts of Woolworths
Supermarket should ensure that they provide adequate details on the products advertised so that
customers will have adequate information of the products they purchase. Besides having
adequate information on the products they purchase, customers will also have a wide variety of
products to choose from. Motivation is one of oldest techniques that organizations have been
using to entice their customers to buy more products. To achieve this, Woolworths Supermarket
must also incorporate gift cards to online buyers based on the amount of money they spend on
the products. This will increase the customer’s desire to purchase more products thus increasing
the sales
Scaled Agile Framework
The company will initially offer gift cards to the most frequent customers. Other
categories will then be identified. These categories will include first time customers and
customers who purchase high quantity products.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths
Customers will have enough information
about the products offered.
Weaknesses
Extra cost required to adopt the solution
Opportunities
New customers will be identified.
Threats
Cyber-attacks which may lead to leak of

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company’s organization
Ethical Sourcing
Just like any other organization, Woolworths Supermarket must ensure that human rights
are protected in the supply chain (Brusoni, 2017, p.234). Currently, this is one of the issues that
need to be addressed in the organization.
Resolution
Woolworths Supermarket should ensure that there is free and fair treatments for its
employees in the supply chain. Besides the employees, customers’ rights should also be
protected. One way that Woolworths Supermarket will ensure that human rights in the supply
chain are protected is by providing ethical business practices. Besides considering the physical
welfare of the employees, Woolworths Supermarket should also ensure that it considers the
employees’ salaries, working hours, working conditions, discrimination, illegal and child labor,
and freedom of association.
Since Woolworths Supermarket has more than eight hundred and ninety one branches
across the country, it must ensure that these policies are followed in all the branches
(Phadermrod, 2019, p.200). Branch managers who cannot uphold these policies should be forced
to terminate their contracts with Woolworths Supermarket. To ensure that human rights are
protected, Woolworths Supermarket should also adopt supplier ethical data exchange (SEDEX).
SEDEX is a global ethical platform that is very crucial in ensuring that the rights of employees
are not violated (Brusoni & Vaccaro, 201, p.230). Finally, Woolworths Supermarket should
improve its hotline so that all employees can have access to information and can report cases
such as discrimination to the relevant offices within the organization.
Scaled Agile Framework

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Woolworths Supermarket will begin by ensuring that the employees’ working conditions are
safe. Other requirements will be implemented bit by bit.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths
Improve productivity
Weaknesses
Extra cost required to adopt the solution
Opportunities
New customers will be identified
Threats
May lead to other complex ethical issues
Improving Campaign and Promotion of Products
According to Cameron et al (2016, p.130), Davis et al (2016, p.110), and Larki (2016,
p.320), the Australian population is growing rapidly. Therefore, Woolworths Supermarket faces
a big challenge in promoting its products. In this regard, solutions to this challenge should be
identified.
Resolution
One of the ways that the marketers as well as the experts will achieve this is by coupling
creativity and innovation to attract new customers. They should essentially use social media
platforms to launch and advertise their products to both new and existing customers. Woolworths
should also make use of existing online websites to promote its products.
Scaled Agile Framework
The first step in this case will be promoting the products through social platforms such as
Facebook. If the sales increase, then other platforms can be tried as well.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths Weaknesses

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This solutions will identify unique products
that the organization offers Extra cost required to adopt the solution
Opportunities
New customers will be identified
Threats
Cyber-attacks which may lead to leak of
company’s organization

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References
Brusoni, S. and Vaccaro, A., 2017. Ethics, technology and organizational innovation. Journal of
Business Ethics, 143(2), pp.223-226.
Bull, J.W., Jobstvogt, N., Böhnke-Henrichs, A., Mascarenhas, A., Sitas, N., Baulcomb, C.,
Lambini, C.K., Rawlins, M., Baral, H., Zähringer, J. and Carter-Silk, E., 2016. Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A SWOT analysis of the ecosystem services
framework. Ecosystem services, 17, pp.99-111.
Cameron, A.J., Charlton, E., Ngan, W.W. and Sacks, G., 2016. A systematic review of the
effectiveness of supermarket-based interventions involving product, promotion, or place on the
healthiness of consumer purchases. Current Nutrition Reports, 5(3), pp.129-138.
Davis, E., Wojtanowski, A., Weiss, S., Foster, G., Karpyn, A. and Glanz, K., 2016. Employee
and customer reactions to a healthy in-store marketing intervention in supermarkets. J Food
Res, 5(1), pp.107-1113.
Larki, M.A. and Amirnejad, Q., 2016. The impact of customer loyalty on organizational
performance in the personal banks in Khuzestan (case study: Ahvaz Metropolitan branches). The
IIOABJ JOurnal, 7(3), pp.318-326.
Phadermrod, B., Crowder, R.M. and Wills, G.B., 2019. Importance-performance analysis based
SWOT analysis. International Journal of Information Management, 44, pp.194-203.
Salmon, S.J., De Vet, E., Adriaanse, M.A., Fennis, B.M., Veltkamp, M. and De Ridder, D.T.,
2015. Social proof in the supermarket: Promoting healthy choices under low self-control
conditions. Food Quality and Preference, 45, pp.113-120.

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Seing, I., MacEachen, E., Ekberg, K. and Ståhl, C., 2015. Return to work or job transition?
Employer dilemmas in taking social responsibility for return to work in local workplace
practice. Disability and rehabilitation, 37(19), pp.1760-1769.