Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Strategy - Essay Example Donald Hambrick and James Frederickson present a framework for strategy design insisting that a strategy has five distinct elements (Hambrick & Fredrickson, 2005, p 51). Providing the answers to five questions will distinguish these five elements allowing them to form a unified whole. Loblaw Companies Limited is the largest food retailer in Canada and also a leading provider among general merchandise, financial products, pharmacies and financial services. They have over 1000 corporate and franchised stores and they employ more than 135,000 employees, both full time and part time. As such they are one of Canada’s largest private sector employers (Loblaw Companies Limited, 2011). Strategies of a company should contain the answers to pertinent questions as to how the company will be a leader among their competitors, where will they base their activity, what is outlined in the company’s business and marketing plans to assist the company in reaching goals, how fast and in wh at order should our actions be planned to get where we want to be and in what economic ways will we realize our returns (Hambrick & Frederickson, 2005, p 3). Deciding the arena, or where the company will be active should not be a generalized decision but as specific as possible in order to focus strongly in implementing successful strategy that will allow them to expand and consider the possibility of one day reaching the status of a product, service, or company that could be considered general by the population. There are very few of these we consider to be general, meaning they are obviously the leader and most often thought of in a particular industry with little competition; the fact is that they just are and there aren’t many decisions to be made or choices when a product, service or company reaches the status of being general. Though there are many general products, such as bread, shoes, cars , etc. there are actually very few that when we think of the general word ther e is only one choice that comes to mind. This would also be considered defining the scope of the business (Collis, Rukstad, 2008, p2). While Loblaw’s mission is to be ‘Canada’s best food, health and home retailer their mission also includes innovative products at great prices (LobLaw Companies Limited.-2, 2008)’. Loblaw’s chose as it’s arena restoring innovation by making their brands and assortment of products worth changing supermarkets for and targeting consumers with specific brands and assorted product specialties that are hard to find in other supermarkets. Their brands wanted to strengthen and also revitalize product development, to simplify and also to grow. These areas are considered the arena the company has chosen to be active in. Core priorities of the company also describe strategy the company will use to achieve goals and reach milestones. LobLaw operations planned to focus on achieving greater performance and increasing engagem ent among colleagues, strengthening the customer experience, simplifying assortments and improving price perceptions (LobLaw Companies Limited.-2, 2008) Enhanced decision making support, an improvement in company infrastructure, along with better talent retention, motivation and development are also vehicles the company’s strategy includes in order to reach the goals their plans have outlined. Various vehicles are less effective than those which are concentrated and strong efforts utilizing only a few strategies at once in order to focus efforts. Differentiator’s used by LobLaw are those factors and attributes that LobLaw will use to differentiate itself among competitors; while not necessarily having one product that is used as differentiator among competitors companies can also have the best combination of differentiators can allow an