Supermarket Expansion Into Malaysia
A supermarket chain based in the United Kingdom is considering expansion to Malaysia. There are several factors to consider before the chain determines that expanding their stores to this market is an effective decision. The business environment of Malaysia is considered to help make this determination. To facilitate this discussion, a brief overview of the country is given. This is followed by a PESTEL Analysis, which reviews the country's political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors that may affect expansion.

Overview of Malaysia:

Malaysia's history is rife with political struggles. The country was under the control of Britain and Japan, prior to garnering their independence in 1957. The Federation of Malaysia was formerly founded in 1963, with Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak joining the federation. Two years later, Singapore seceded from the federation and became an independent country. It wasn't until 1981, and the election of Prime Minister Mahathir…...

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References

Country Overview.(2010). Available:   Last accessed 14th Nov 2010.http://www.countrywatch.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/cw_topic.aspx?type=text&vcountry=107&topic=PCPRF .

Economic Overview. (2010). Available:   Last accessed 14th Nov 2010.http://www.countrywatch.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/cw_topic.aspx?type=text&vcountry=107&topic=MAOVR .

Human Rights. (2010). Available:   Last accessed 14th Nov 2010.http://www.countrywatch.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/cw_topic.aspx?type=text&vcountry=107&topic=POHRT .

Key Data. (2010). Available:   Last accessed 14th Nov 2010.http://www.countrywatch.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/cw_country.aspx?vcountry=107 .

Fresh Foods Supermarkets:
Fresh Foods Supermarket is a chain of grocery store that was initiated about two decades ago in the Southeast of the United States. Since its inception, this chain of grocery stores has continued to grow forcing the firm to adapt new expansion strategies. The strategies have enabled Fresh Foods Supermarkets to open new stores in various areas including Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. While the company has been currently unable to reach the northern New England States, its management has decided to focus on the Southwest because of the population growth in this region. As part of its initiative to expand to Arizona, the company has asked the manager of its stores in Atlanta to relocate to this region. This has provided a new frontier for Fresh Foods Supermarket that seeks to include diversity initiatives into its corporate culture.

History, Corporate Structure, and Growth of Fresh Foods Supermarket:

The…...

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References:

Lieberman, S. (n.d.). Moving Beyond the Numbers -- How to Recruit and Retain a Diverse

Workforce. Retrieved January 28, 2012, from  http://www.simmalieberman.com/articles/diverseworkforce.html 

Rinaldi, D. (2009, September 8). Should I Expand My Business? Retrieved January 28, 2012,

from  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/203666

Human Behavior Observation: Supermarket Context
Human behavior is largely defined in the field of psychology as a result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations (Lewin, 1951, p.12). While the observation of human behavior has been conducted over the centuries in many different settings, the aspect of this observation that has had the tendency to alter how people interact with their surroundings and with one another in terms of their daily behavior is the knowledge that they are being studied. Much like anthropologist Jane Goodall studied the aspects of chimpanzee social and family life through viewing them in their naturalistic setting, so have psychologists taken on a more anthropological role in observing human behavior through the utilization of naturalistic observation.

In observing human behavior in the context of a supermarket for instance, psychologists and researchers have the capacity to garner a truly unfettered look at certain aspects of human…...

The case of Superior Supermarkets demonstrates the need for retailers to evaluate whether low pricing strategy is indeed the right solution and approach to increase competitiveness in the trade and for consumers. For Superior, the option to use EDLP as a pricing strategy must include an assessment of the retail grocery chain's pricing strategy prior to launching the EDLP approach. This way, Superior can best identify if the EDLP is the best approach after assessing pricing for all grocery items/product categories (i.e., do most or only few of the items need further reduction to increase pricing competitiveness). In addition, it would also be wise for Hall to determine, from consumer research results, the different "dimensions" that consumers give to the determinant "price." It is possible that "price" for consumers is simply looking at the price per se, and it is also possible that other consumers evaluate prices differently, attaching…...

ABC Supermarket PLC
Case Analysis

atio Analysis

The results of ABC Supermarket's financial performance are very different from the comments shared by the Chairman in the 2009 Annual report. Based on the evaluation below, the company's cash, profitability, and liquidity positions all weakened between 2006 and 2009. They also had an issue with managing inventory. However, the stock price increased successively over this period of time. This may have been a factor of raising more debt.

eturn on Capital Employed (OCE)

The eturn on Capital Employed ratio (OCE) tells us how much profit we earn from the investments the shareholders have made in their company. It is also the rate of return a business is making on the total capital employed in the business. Capital will include all sources of funding (shareholders funds + debt).

The single most important indicator of the inherent excellence of a business is the return on capital employed. There is a…...

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References

Anderson, K.; Brooks, C. (2006). The Long-Term Price-Earnings Ratio.

 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=739664 

Gordon, Alexander. 2010. "How to Improve Working Capital Management."

Ezinearticles.com. [Online] Available at:

Econo Supermarkets
Business Overview

ECONO Supermarkets came in 1970, when Facundo Colon, owner of a small supermarket in Hato Rey of 5,000 square feet and Rafael Acosta Pastrana, owner of Oscar Grocery in Hato Rey decide to establish a business model that would allow it to compete effectively with the big chains of the moment; since then ECONO affiliate team is dedicated to working with a high level of commitment that has led them to become one of the leaders in the Food Industry Puerto Rico (Econo Supermarkets, N.d.). Today the business operates nearly sixty stores and has over a million square feet of store spaces as well as over five thousand employees. The company has even won several awards for their retail effectiveness (Caribbean Business, 1999). Their business model focuses on consolidation, efficiency, and customer relations. The stores sell a full range of grocery items as well as some household items.

Problem

Despite…...

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Works Cited

Caribbean Business. (1999, July 1). Retailer of the Year: Econo Supermarkets. Caribbean Business, p. 44.

Econo Supermarkets. (N.d.). History of Econo. Retrieved from Econo Supermarktes:  http://www.superecono.com/econo/default.aspx

Operations Management
Alliance Supermarket Case Study

Point of sale (PoS) systems that is able to accurately track sales using universal product codes (UPC) has the potential to improve service and reduce costs. If the system was further adjusted, there would also be the potential to collect information on individual customers which would allow Alliance Supermarket to adopt some new, and potentially valuable, strategies.

Reducing Costs and Improving Service

he PoS system allows Alliance Supermarket to gather detailed information on sales patterns, looking not only at what level of goods are sold, but also when. his can be very useful for inventory control, as it may help the firm to gain information which may be used to better manage inventory, especially in terms of forecasting for future inventory needs.

Accurate forecasting may help to reduce the wastage in the supermarket, especially for perishable items, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy goods, fish and meat. If…...

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The system may also be used to improve the supply chain management if the company chooses to share information with major suppliers, you will be able to use information to undertake their own forecasting, a strategy that is seen with WalMart (Mintzberg et al., 2011).

Potential Use of Individual Customer Data

A PoS provides data regarding what has been sold, and an advanced system may provide indication of what goods are sold together, but it does not help with identifying who it is that is buying the goods. A potential new strategy which would utilize

people at Work
Supermarket

The supermarket employee is part of team; or rather part of larger machine in which every person has a specific role in the running of the store. The hierarchies of employees that make up the staff contingency within a supermarket include management, stock control clerks, shelf packers, cashiers, customer care officers, and store cleaners. The efficiency of a supermarket, as perceived by its customers, is dependent on the effective interaction between staff members to ensure that applicable tasks are carried out.

The supermarket employee most seen by the public is the employee who works at the register. Their day is a continual routine with one customer after another and then stolen moments of gossip and chatting between the onslaught of products to be rung up. They manage to maintain a sense of perspective throughout and the daily routines with a certain amount of enjoyment.

Occasionally an employee meets a…...

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Bibliography

How Car Washes Work. February 9, 2005.  http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-wash1.htm 

Wicks Pizza' February 9, 2005.  http://www.wickspizza.com/aboutus.html 

Natschk. L. Training, commitment are key elements.

Supermarket News; 6/4/1990

Publix Supermarket
Since 1930, Publix has been focused on providing a wide variety of grocery related products to customers in: Florida, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. The main focus of their strategy has been to create neighborhood stores in these states to become a part of the community. This is when consumers will have greater amounts of loyalty to the firm. As they believe that every Publix location, is providing them with the best products at affordable prices. (Mujtaba, 2007, pp. 23 -- 32)

However, during the last several years is when the overall amounts of competition facing the company have increased exponentially. This is because firms such as: Wal Mart and many foreign-based supermarket chains have been entering markets that are dominated by Publix. In order to compete, the firm has been focusing on: providing customers with private label products, moving into specialty markets and offering competitive prices. This has helped…...

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References

Berman, B. (2011). Competing in Tough Times. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Buss, T. (2011). Evidence-Based Public Management. New York, NY: ME Sharp.

Mujtaba, B. (2007). A Retailer's Steady Growth Strategy. Journal of Business Case Studies, 3 (4), 23 -- 32

Spoelestra, H. (1999). Negotiation. Kenwyn: Juta.

British community, the rapid growth of supermarket has been a fact of life for more or less the last thirty years. This unchecked growth has been attributed to a variety of factors, including business enterprise coupled with laissez-faire planning and competition policies. Furthermore supermarkets have currently grown to affect every area of British life. Economic, social, environmental and cultural issues are for example under investigation when it comes to the possibly detrimental effects of large supermarkets on the British community. There are several problems that are then connected with rapid supermarket growth. The awareness of theses is growing, as can be seen in a variety of news releases and the like. The community is beginning to recognize that, along with the many benefits brought about by supermarket chains, there are also several detriments. These include elements such as unrestrained growth and its deterrent effects on sustainable development. While supermarkets…...

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If supermarkets were to succeed in the British community, the concerns highlighted in the literature regarding the issue need to receive serious consideration. Denial and ignoring the problem will only fuel already negative emotions. Indeed, it is often the attitude of large chain store business people that place a more positive emphasis on the corner shop ideal than might in fact be the case. If supermarkets were indeed to make good their claim of environmental and community concerns with the actions to substantiate it, a much more positive paradigm is possible. For this to occur, all issues should be taken into account, including the community and its concerns, the economy and also the environment within which the stores operate. Supermarkets are not inherently an evil force. They are a manifestation of community growth. It should however be recognized that the community supporting these chain stores need in turn to be supported and cultivated as well.

Source

Breed, Colin. "Checking out the Supermarkets." London, 2005. http://www.colinbreed.org.uk/downloads/CHECKINGOUTTHESUPERMARKETSII.doc

Reed Supermarkets is a high-end supermarket chain that has business operations in different states in the Midwestern region of the United States. The chain is well acknowledged and renowned for its quality and exceedingly observant consumer service. A consumer of Reed is to some extent older, richer and had a smaller family in comparison to the normal consumer. The average income of a shopper in Reed supermarkets is about 12% greater compared to the normal consumer. The Columbus market, which has the biggest market share, was comparatively steady; however Reed had experienced diffident share deteriorations in previous periods. Its market share has declined in the past number of years. Reed Supermarkets is facing fresh threats and worries to its position as a market leader amid the supermarkets in the region as well as from rivals such as dollar stores and the other stores that offer lower and attractive price points.
How…...

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Works Cited

Paley, Norton. The Manager's Guide to Competitive Marketing Strategies. London: Thorogood, 2001.

Quelch, John, A., Carlson, Carole. Reed Supermarkets: A New Wave of Competitors. Harvard Business School, 2011.

Ramaswamy, V. S., Namakumari, S. Marketing Management. New Delhi: McGrawHill Publishers, 2013.

III.1. Value innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy

The Blue Ocean Strategy was developed by Kim and Mauborgne (2005) and it's the result of long-term strategy study over 30 industries covering 120 years. The core idea of this theory is to create value for the firm and its buyers by taking the differentiation-cost trade-off to a different level. Successful firms may want to create "blue oceans," which represent the new/innovative solution in order to become more competitive, rather than compete in "red oceans', which stand for the existing market place (see table 1).

TABLE 1 - ED and BLUE OCEAN STATEGIES

ED OCEAN STATEGY

BLUE OCEAN STATEGY

Compete in existing market space

Create uncontested market space

Beat the competition

Make the competition irrelevant

Exploit existing demand

Create and capture new demand

Make the value-cost trade-off

Break the value-cost trade-off

Align the whole system of a firm's activities with its strategic choice of differentiation or low cost

Align the whole system of a firm's activities in…...

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Reference List

Blue Ocean Strategy official website, Accessed April 2008, www.blueoceanstrategy.com

Clark, K. 1996. Competing Through Manufacturing and the New Manufacturing Paradigm: Is Manufacturing Strategy Passe'? Production and Operations Management, vol. 5(1): pp. 42-58.

Hayes, R.H. & Pisano, G.P. 1996. Manufacturing Strategy: At the Intersection of Two Paradigm Shifts, Production and Operations Management, vol. 5(1): pp. 25-41.

Hayes, R.H., Pisano, G.P., Upton, D.M. & Wheelwright, S.C. 2005. Operations, Strategy, and Technology: Pursuing the Competitive Edge. Wiley: New York.

Carrefour Supermarket
Company Background

Standard Costing

ABC Costing

Differences in ABC vs. Absorption

The Carrefour Group is one of the world leaders in retail industry and through over fifty years of dedicated efforts, is now the largest retailer in Europe and second largest in world. A literature review was conducted to see how an ABC costing method could potentially benefit this retail giant. It was found that the ABC method would be more accurate than the other costing methods and therefore provide a better representation of the retailer's actual costs. Furthermore, this costing system is also more in line with strategic goals and a focus on quality because it adds value through the managerial accounting perspective. Managers would be able to have better metrics to make key strategy decisions regarding costs as well as quality and could therefore create a better internal retail environment. This analysis will consider the advantages to ABC costing as well…...

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Works Cited

Carrefour. (2013). Company Financial Statements. Retrieved from Carrefour:  http://www.carrefour-banque.fr/sites/default/files/_files/pourquoi/2012_financial_report.pdf 

Carrefour Group. (N.d.). Financial Overview. Retrieved from Carrefour Group Website:  http://www.carrefour.com/content/financial-overview 

Carrefour Group. (N.d.). Net Sales. Retrieved from Carrefour Group:  http://www.carrefour.com/content/net-sales 

Martin, J. (N.d.). Cost Accounting Systems and Manufacturing Statements. Retrieved from  http://maaw.info/Chapter2.htm

Marketing
ecently in the UK, there have been price wars in both the supermarket and mobile phone industries. These price war are a natural part of competition in a market economy, and the behaviour of these firms can be understood using microeconomic principles. This paper will examine both the supermarket and mobile phone wars using microeconomic models in order to demonstrate how these basic economic principles are applied in the real world.

Competition

While there are many types of competition in microeconomic models, most industries in market economies operate under the condition of monopolistic competition. This condition is where firms have many competitors, and each competitor seeks to differentiate itself in some way from the other competitors (Economics Online, 2014). In the supermarket industry, companies require fairly broad target markets in order to generate the revenue they require to survive. Thus, we see for example that Waitrose will tend towards higher-end products and…...

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References

Bhargava, H. & Gangwar, M. (2013). Mobile telephony pricing in emerging markets. Indian School of Business. Retrieved November 6, 2014 from  http://www.isb.edu/faculty/Manish_Gangwar/Mobile%20Telephony%20Pricing%20in%20Emerging%20Markets.pdf 

Economics Online. (2014). Monopolistic competition. Economics Online. Retrieve November 6, 2014 from  http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Business_economics/Monopolistic_competition.html 

Gilbert, M. (2014). Milk sours in UK supermarket wars. Bloomberg. Retrieved November 6, 2014 from  http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-06/milk-sours-in-u-k-supermarket-wars 

Investopedia. (2014). Opportunity cost. Investopedia. Retrieved November 6, 2014 from  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp

Publix Supermarket
Many small, as well as medium-sized companies have faced challenges contending with Wal-Mart because of their low prices, one shopping structure and long opening hours associated with the Wal-Mart. Publix Super Markets is an exception, which recently opened another store to the public. It has a market share totaling to more than 40% in Florida and evidently, Publix supermarkets have taken over from popular supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and other established chain stores as they continue with their expansion into more states such as Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia among others.

Retail analysts commonly associate Publix's treatment of employees, high quality customer service and capacity to tailor commodities to different customer groups as demanded by the market forces to be the main factors that have continued to enhance the supermarket's productivity and market dominance. Publix rankings tops in customer satisfaction and they have a solid reputation on customer service.…...

The Forgotten Feast: Exploring the Cultural Conundrum of Food Waste

In an era where global hunger persists, the staggering problem of food waste remains largely unaddressed. Beyond the realm of desperation and food insecurity, a deeper cultural conundrum lies hidden – the forgotten feast. This essay delves into lesser-known aspects of food waste, shedding light on its complexities and the societal shifts necessary to address it.

The Illusion of Abundance

One of the most insidious aspects of food waste is the perception of abundance. In developed nations, supermarkets overflow with produce, obscuring the reality of limited global resources. The illusion of endless supply....

The Power of Teamwork: Volunteering at Long Island Cares Inc. Introduction Volunteering is an act of selflessness and compassion that has the power to transform both the individual and the community. By working together towards a common goal, volunteers can achieve extraordinary outcomes that would be impossible for any one person to accomplish alone. Long Island Cares Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting hunger on Long Island, New York, epitomizes the transformative power of teamwork. Through their comprehensive volunteer program, Long Island Cares engages individuals from all walks of life in a collaborative effort to alleviate food insecurity and promote food....