Strategic Developments in the UK Grocery Industry
Briefing
Before we can start thinking about the sorts of strategies pursued by UK supermarkets, or the question of who is competing against whom we need to understand some of the key issues and developments at play in the industry. Many of these can be termed environmental issues and most strategy textbooks will encourage students to group such factors under headings such as Legal, Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Competitive. Some texts may just focus on “PEST” factors – but, this is all essentially the same stuff.
Note that here we mean “environmental” not in the sense of the natural environment or ecology, but of what is often termed the “business environment” – ie all these factors which surround businesses and which they may chose to see in a pro-active, dynamic way as creating business opportunities or in a defensive way as requiring consolidation and reactive behaviour.
Task and Reading
Read the following article and summarise the key strategic developments in the UK supermarket sector discussed in the article. Indicate the extent to which you would call these factors “environmental” and identify any significant changes to the sector which have occurred since the date of the article. Maximum 3 sides of A4 in 11 point Verdana. Reference your sources.
Harvey M. (2000) Innovation and competition in UK supermarkets, Supply Chain Management, Vol 5 No 1, pp15-21 (via Emerald)
Advice
The first part of the task requires you to focus on the specific source but the second part of the task requires you to find and use a range of up to date sources to discuss the “significant changes” to the sector since 2000.
In the article Harvey (2000, p.19) says, " It is possible to speculate that the rate of change will slow down, and that the "big four" retailers will sit on their relatively oligopolistic gains. But it is equally possible that this process of long term dynamic growth could be stalled by short-term price wars stimulated by a discounting model of retailing or a regulatory framework that takes a narrow view of competition as one simply of product and price, and of firm against firm." Note the word "oligopolistic" - this is an economic tool for understanding competition - do you understand what it means and what it implies about the industry in question? And, what actually happened to competition in the sector?
麻烦高手们帮我翻译下这个英语作文题目要求作文的要求大体重点说明下就可以了 不要用翻译软件 谢谢大家的帮助
|
