Competitor Analysis Assignment: Case Scenario Of Coles Supermarket

Question

Task: For this assessment, you are required to conduct a competitor analysis for Coles Supermarket.

Answer

PART A- Summary
The project examined in the competitor analysis assignment has been planned in a strategic method of analyzing the areas of marketing activities and the status of the chosen competitors of Coles Supermarket retail organization that is based in Australia. The beginning of the project has introduced the concept of competitive analysis in business as well as identifying its critical direct and indirect competitors from the common market.

Moreover, it has been supported with significant market research that is argued by scholars in terms of strengths and weaknesses that are part of the discussion as well. According to Aghdam&Lafvat(2016), indirect competitors have a joint group of target customers from different sectors, whereas; the direct players have the same sector customers. In this respect, it has been evident from the overall findings that Coles'direct competitors are mainly the Woolworths and Kmart Australia playing in the common ground (Van Kampen& Kirkham, 2020). On the other hand, George Western Foods and Treasury Wine Estates are mainly indirect players as well (Winetitles, 2020).

Based on this facts, it has been identified in this competitor analysis assignment that all of the competitors, whether its direct or indirect players in the market, have their individuality and strength and competitive advantages, as per strategic plan of actions. Therefore, it has been observed that the chosen competitor applies its effective marketing mix strategies of 4Ps that is influencing on the brand despite major competition. Hence, it has been recommended to the chosen organization, Coles to have specific areas of enhancement for future sustainability.

PART B- Literature Review
Introduction
Competitor analysis has been analyzed in this competitor analysis assignment, as an evaluation of marketing and strategic factors of the strengths, weaknesses and several other potential factors of a brand. Its primary duty lies for its factual expressions of the chances and the menaces that the company has to face. The review of the paper has been based on the competitive analysis of all identified direct and indirect competitors throwing down a more in-depth insight into the key strengths and weaknesses as well as its competitive advantages in the market.

Identification of Competitors
Two Direct Competitors:
The direct competitors of Coles Supermarket Retail are Woolworths and Kmart Australia.These are the companies, which exist in a common sector of retail consumer products. In other words, above stated companies deal with grocery and retail businesses (Elshaer&Augustyn, 2016). The direct competitors initially show the pressures points of competition of the company specifically.

Two Indirect Competitors:
George Western Food Limited and Treasury Wine Estates are the two indirect competitors of the Coles Supermarket Retail. The indirect competitors mainly comprise a dissimilar sector of industry dealing with the common target customers in the market (Aghdam&Lafvat, 2016). However, they are chained in the competition line from their economic point of view.

Competitor Analysis of the Chosen rivals
Indirect Competitors
Competitor company information
George Weston Foods is a part of the largest food manufacturing units in Australia founded in 1999. The company currently has 8000 employees across 60 locations in the country and the firm deals with 107 companies as corporations. The company had annual revenue of around 1.6 billion dollars. The company deals with packed food products of baking, dairy and meat.

Core products/services offered
The company works primarily in food manufacturing along with dairy and meat products. The firm produces, sells and distributes food products, baking products like bread, rolls, cakes, buns, muffins, hit cakes, and pizza bases as well as provides dairy and meat products and bake-at-home products. The company concept of services allows it to supply products for both the food and retail sectors.

Strengths
The information collected from various sources to prepare this competitor analysis assignment signifies that the company has various strengths in the marketplace, being a diversified business; it provides numerous products in all food industries as well as the retails. The company has been using technologies to increase and improve productions. The primary strength of George Weston foods is its focus on sustainability in the business (Vidler et al. 2018).

Weaknesses
George Weston Foods being in the food industry, especially in baking has to keep the products available and fresh. The company faces the challenge to keep the products fresh and reach them to the customers as per their need and in time (Robinson Blake & Sacks 2020). Being in the food industry, the company has to depend on the market and the customer demands

Competitive advantage
George Weston Foods has patterned with Capgemini in order to implement new solutions for faster and reliable information at fingertips. The competition has been increasing; the cost pressures are affecting the business(Hobill& Sanderson, 2017). The result if the partnership has helped the company to get the relevant information, and foresee the platforms that would help to grow the business.

Second Company: Treasury Wine Estates
Competitor company information
Treasury wine estates are one of the largest wine companies in the world and have been listed in the Australian Securities Exchange. It is stated in the competitor analysis assignment that the businesses focus on meeting consumer demands across the globe and deliver sustainable growth (Home - Treasury Wine Estates. 2020). The company employs around 3500 people across the globe majorly focused in Australia, New Zealand and the Western countries having annual revenue of around 2 billion dollars.

Core products/services offered
Treasury Wine Estates owns over 45 wine labels, which include Australia's Penfold, Wolf Blass and Lindemann's, and across the globe labels as Beringer and Sterling. The company has 14000 hectares of vineyards that helps it in the production of the finest quality wines.

Strengths
The winery as being the leader has numerous strengths like super performance in the market esp. the new ones, the high brand value which will be useful for experimenting with new products, fine returns on the investments and successful track record maintained for years along with a skilled workforce, all will help the company grow(Logan 2019) .

Weaknesses
The wine industry faces high attrition if its employees, the profitability ratio arelimited; the integration with different forms is difficult because of the difference in work culture (McRae et al. 2018). The demand is limited and that leads to success in limited sections.

Competitive advantage
The competitive advantage for treasury wine estate is its inclusion of diversity, maintaining gender diversity, with an increased number of female leaders (Kenny, Blissende&Villios, 2017). The inclusion leads to better understanding and knowledge about the market.

Direct Competitors
Information about Woolworths
Woolworths has been considered as a highly retail group based in Australia. Being a direct competitor of Coles Supermarket consumer retailer, it manipulates near about 995 stores and has 115k group members for their distribution centers, shops and offices (Woolworths.com.au, 2020).

Core products/services offered
The source utilized in this section of competitor analysis assignment illustrates that the company deals with selling and production of grocery items along with consumer brands from online marketing systems and home delivery products that could reach up to their expectation (Woolworths.com.au, 2020). Apart from them, financial services, insurance services, credit cards and gift cards are also laid out by the organization as well.

Strengths
The paramount supremacy of Woolworths is that it has reached a remarkable leading position in the national market. It earned a market share of around 80% despite a highly competitive market. In addition, it had evolved with good divisions in market policies and had gained positive responses from its customers with great care (Mitchelson, 2020). This led the organization to achieve 55% in the middle section.

Weaknesses
The key weaknesses have been witnessed in some common existing items available in the single target market. At the same time, the organization seems to have insufficient financial strength or capacity to pay its staff and is found to have nearly $300 million unpaid amount (Rayan&Chau, 2019). This had a greater impact on the brand reputation.

Competitive advantage
The organization has been identified with its core competitive advantage of its effective food plan and managing its customers with expertise solutions (Woolworths Group.com.au, 2020). In other words, Woolworths seems to be working on its sustainable strategies for managing its marketing processes in Australian market as well.

About Kmart Australia
Another company undertaken in this competitor analysis assignmentis Kmart Australia Limited which is a renowned chain of affordable retail stores based in Australia and is owned by Wesfarmers. The brand operates through 234 stores located both in Australia as well as New Zealand, with 209 stores operating in Australia and 25 stores operating in New Zealand (Kmart.com.au, 2020). The head office of KMart Australia Limited is located in Mulgrave, Melbourne.

Core products/services offered
Kmart Australia Limited deals with a wide range of products starting from toys, bedding, clothing, shoes, jewelry, baby care products, electronic items, home decor products, sports items, medicines, grocery, and many more. The brand also offers online services through its official website and mobile app where the customers can order the products they require and get them home delivered.

Strengths
Kmart Australia has made a reputation for itself by providing quality products and has more than 50 years of tradition. It has an impressive and divergent marketing and communication channel both online as well as offline platforms ("Kmart: Market Intelligence Report", 2020). It has a strong social corporate responsibility program, which increases their brand value.

Weaknesses
Kmart Australia has been facing problems for quite some time in competing with its competitors in terms of pricing of its products and services. The low-cost strategy of the brand has been a troubling issue resulting in a reduced salary rate of employees and an incompetent working environment.

Competitive advantage
One of the biggest competitive advantages of KMart Australia is their active presence on social media to aggressively market their products and services to a broad range of customers. The direct sourcing model eliminating the middleman in between has considerably reduced the prices of the products they offer to the customers as a result giving them an edge over its competitors (Creative Revolution.com.au., 2020).

What are the current and future objectives of the chosen direct companywithin this competitor analysis assignment

• To enhance the core offers in order to assure that Woolworths Australia is always the first choice of the customers when it comes to retail marketing.
• To achieve positive growth by bringing about innovative methods in order to meet with the needs and expectations of the customers (Woolworths Group.com.au., 2020).

Future objective of Woolworths

Target Market of the company
Woolworths Australia is one of the largest supermarket chains in Australia and has been meeting with the demands and needs of the customers successfully due to their active marketing strategies. They have effectively segmented the market in order to understand the values and expectations of the customers and target customers of all ages starting from 5 to 55 years, by providing products of daily use to them.

It is evident in the competitor analysis assignmentthat Woolworths Australia has selected almost all the regions in Australia as its target market and has nearly 1000 supermarket retail stores in order to cater to the needs and demands of the customers (Knight, 2020). Woolworths Australia has many competitors like Coles and Aldi, etc. following similar marketing strategies, but the unique pricing strategies of their products and giving more preference to the quality of the products over their price have facilitated to draw more customers.

Market Mix of 4Ps of the company
Company: Woolworths Australia

Conclusion
In this competitive world, the organizations in the competitive market follow a stiff competition in terms of the market strategies they frame in order to promote the products and services they offer to the customers. In that case, Coles can be suggested to have key concentration on its competitive values with priority level. In fact, such a competition that is recognized above among its direct and indirect rivalsis a form of evaluation, which an organization utilizes in order to assess its position in the market and then reframe their marketing strategies if the situation warrants so in order to have an edge over its competitors. Hence, it can be concluded from the above discussion on competitor analysis assignment thatthe right marketing mix of place, product, price, and promotion strategies for an organization is quite crucial in order to have a competitive advantage in the market.

References
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