Williams-Sonoma continues with its current strategies and objectives in five years, it will be facing declining sales, declining profits and may be evaluating the merits of continuing some of these brands. Basically, the company's financials have been strong and it has responded with a variety of new brands and brand extensions. However, the company's business is cyclical, and correlated with the health of the economy and in particular the housing market. Both the economy and housing market are doing well in 2003, and will continue to do well for about 3 more years. By 2008, however, the housing market will be dead, and the economy will be tanking. This will have a strongly negative effect on Williams-Sonoma. The company's current strategy is to build its share in furnishings by filling in gaps in the market, using these many brands to achieve that objective. The problem inherent in this is that all none of these new brands represents significant diversification away from the core industry. Worse, as an aspirational brand, Williams-Sonoma is going to benefit from a strong economy where customers are seeking to "trade up," but when the economy tanks aspirational brands often take a hit as consumers are forced to "trade down" or defer purchases altogether. Williams-Sonoma is not as successful at targeting the truly recession-proof market that exists at the very high end of the furniture market. Another point of concern strategically is that Williams-Sonoma is starting new...
This is going to result, unfortunately, in some of the new brands not receiving the attention and quality management they need to thrive -- resources at the company are going to be spread thin with these rapid brand introductions. The company is also going to be more difficult to manage -- and needlessly so. A streamlining of the organizational structure is likely going to be necessary when the recession hits.
Williams-Sonoma continues with its present strategies and objectives, where will they be in 5 years? In the next five years, Williams-Sonoma will make an impact on society as they are currently. One has to note that they will have become a multinational corporation (MNE). This is because they are continuously trying to find ways in which to grow, and their strategy will make this possible due to them having a
Strategic Human Resource PlanIntroductionWilliam Sonoma�s strategic human resource management plan highlights the company�s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and further seeks to formulate human resource goals that satisfy the SMART criteria. These goals will be developed with an intention of ensuring that the organization continues to be relevant in an increasingly competitive business environment. Human resource goals happen to be of great relevance in the overall success of the organization.
Global Gadgets We're going to get the whole "stating the obvious" out of the way. The company has ten retail stores, so obviously there is room to grow through geographic expansion even in a down market. We comprise an insignificant portion of the market share in this business, so to worry about fractions of percentages is almost silly. The focus of this report is going to be trying to figure out
Stock Portfolio Management Project Selected 10 companies Company Symbol purchase date purchase price Apple, Inc. APPL Industry/Sector: Technology/Personal Computer -- Investment Style: Large Growth Brocade BRCD Communications Systems Inc. Industry/Sector: Technology/Data Storage -- Investment Style: Small Growth Joy Global Inc. JOYG Industry/Sector: Farm/Const/Mach -- Investment Style: Large Growth Ctrip.com CTRP Industry/Sector: Consumer Services -- Investment Style: International Gerdau SA GGB Industry/Sector: Steal & Iron -- Investment Style: International Gol Linhas GOL Aereas Inteligentes SA Industry/Sector: Regional Airline -- Investment Style: International Green Mountain GMCR 10/21/2009 Coffee Roasters Inc. Industry/Sector: Processed Pkgd gds -- Investment Style: Small Growth Rio Tinto PLC RTP 10/21 /
OXO Marketing SWOT analysis. Conduct a very brief SWOT analysis of the internal and external environments affecting the kitchen gadget industry. Be sure to summarize your findings. There is a SWOT worksheet in the Marketing Toolbox under How to Prepare a Case Analysis that you might find helpful. The kitchen gadget industry continues to experience slow growth relative to the higher growth markets of intelligent home electronics and automated kitchen appliances. With
New-found competitiveness for Small- to Medium-Sized Companies The outlook for smaller companies is much stronger today than it was at Amazon's founding. That's because several of the advantages enjoyed at the time by Amazon have been commoditized or made easier and less expensive to implement. As the number of users has climbed since 1995, smaller businesses can now take a market-maturing step and segment their customers in an ever-finer fashion (Rangan 1992).
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