Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Tesco conquers the world? Sounds like an inflated fantasy. I have never heard of them over here in the U.S.A. - the world's most competitive marketplace - especially for food and groceries. Until they start snatching up gigantic chunks of marketshare here - then I would excuse such a claim.

Dear Dietcoke 36,

First, for those KHE contributors who may be unfamiliar with TESCO, a little background information might help.

With annual profits of £3 billion ($US 4.9 billion) TESCO is the largest supermarket and general merchandise chain in the UK. Based on its revenue, it's also the world's third largest global retailer (behind Wal-Mart in the number one spot and the French chain, Carrefour in second place).

TESCO employs over 460,000 people world wide, over half of whom live in the UK. TESCO has 4,308 stores worldwide and they serve 14 global markets, including: China, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Slovakia, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, UK, and the USA.

Dietcoke 36, to BECOME the third largest global anything, you
need a strategy—a solid plan or set of measures if you will, against which you gauge all progress, all decisions, all mistakes, and all successes.

When you make choices, the directions of those choices impact your outcome. If you need to get to the High Street, which means making a left turn out of your street and you only ever turn RIGHT, you're unlikely to make it to the High Street. With me?

So, ramp up THAT model—magnify the living daylights out of it
and add in dozens if not hundreds of choices, all of which MUST underpin where you want to go and you'll have a strategic plan.

I know that's a pretty simplistic way of looking at things,
but that's it, in a nutshell.

The strategy draws out the map and gives everyone on the journey direction. They may all have differing functions, tasks, or jobs to do along the way, but the role of everyone is to ensure that the whole mission remains on target and that the strategic aims and objectives (where you're going and how you're going to get there) are adhered to.

I hope this helps you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

If you’re talking about Marketing strategy only, there are a lot of models to choose from. I’d probably use the 4 Ps (or however many there are this morning). But plenty of good alternatives.

If it’s the overall strategy, here are areas of strategic decision making—although not everything I mention is easy, or even possible, to find.

GROWTH/EXPANSION STRATEGY
Look at their growth, past, current, projected. Things like product line expansion, store location, international expansion. Why did they move the way they did?

SUPPLIER STRATEGY
Look at their supplier relations. How do you get shelf space there. How and why has the structure changed over the years?. Reasonable chance there are business articles that touch on it somewhere.

PARTNER STRATEGY
Walmart here has deals with various vendors, like McDonalds, to sell inside the store. Tesco too? If so, look at the structure, or at least nature, of those relationships. The money part is important. So are things like finding a pattern to the types of vendors, seeing if they're in all stores and if not why not . . . so on.

MARKETING STRATEGY
Look at how they market. As I say, there are lots of good ways to approach it.

STAFFING STRATEGY
Employment strategy is worth looking at. See what kind of thumbnail stats you can derive from their jobs page, management bios, and so. Average qualifications, pay rates, education and so on. How does that strategy increase profit?"

SALES STRATEGY
Online and offline.. Comparative prices in-store and online. Incentives to come to store. Incentives to shop online. What kind of discounts, coupons. Methods of customer interaction