Whole Foods Competitive Advantage

Whole Foods Market has received recognition as recent as January 27th 2011 when CNBC aired Supermarkets Inc: Inside a 500 Billion Money Machine. “Whole Foods is arguably the most influential, and by some measures, the most successful supermarket chain in the world. The specialty gourmet store has grown into a Fortune-300 company offering specialty foods and locally grown organic produce.1” CNBC goes on to state that even “Established brands like Safeway, Giant Eagle and Kroger are cultural icons as familiar as our own street names, but they are under constant attack from brilliant upstarts like Whole Foods…1” From the general supermarket industry Whole Foods Market breaks down into even a smaller specific

Whole Foods definitely uses human capital as a competitive advantage in multiple aspects of the company business model. Whole Foods built the foundation of their business model around quality, empowered employees. These employees are the key to the unique experience that defines the company and the source of their primary competitive advantage in the marketplace. This competitive advantage is framed around the concepts of human capital value, human capital rareness, and human capital imitability (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2015). Whole Foods human capital value is represented by knowledgeable, capable employees empowered to champion the overall strategy of the company and make decisions at the lowest level to ensure a great product and customer experience (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2015). Human capital rareness is demonstrated by the emphasis placed on sourcing, interviewing, and hiring practices. This ensures Whole Foods hires the unique employee that will champion the quality of their product line as well as the front-line face of the company to customers. Regarding human capital imitability, Whole Foods overall human capital focus and packaging makes a formidable task for competitors to replicate. From the overall compensation package, degree of employee input and interaction, benefits structure, bonus program, and overall company environment, Whole Foods ensures that sourcing and retention of employees provides a definite advantage (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2015).

Although Whole Foods Market not only survived the recession but also has seen steady growth since 2009, its’ business model is not sustainable in the longer term. Compared with its competitors’ prices (Whole Foods being pricier), and receiving the nickname “whole paycheck,” Whole Foods has serious competition, especially with its competitor Kroger. Kroger’s net income was approximately $1.5 billion the past year, while Whole Food’s had a net income around $500 million. Also, having a pure grocery market company puts limitation on its growth in the future makes Whole Foods not sustainable. Companies selling only groceries have to compete with maintaining lower prices, which takes away from its profit margin, compared to companies like Wal-Mart

Whole Foods Market Inc. is known as America’s healthiest grocery store. The company has been recognized as “Most Admired 2015 Companies” and “Top 100 Companies to Work For” by Fortune for eighteen years, stating, “The supermarket chain has redefined grocery shopping in the U.S”. The establishment has been also been ranked at number 3 on the list of America’s most reputable companies in the retail industry. The recognitions and awards represent the decades of passion and dedication of the Whole Foods Market’s

As of September 2015 Whole Foods Incorporated had 431 stores in the United States, Britain and Scotland. Over the years since its inception Whole Foods Incorporated has grown steadily recording high revenues that have made it to be recognized as a Fortune 500 company. It has accomplished this by sticking to its original mission of retailing organic foods in a market where other retail stores mainly retail processed foods that are high in calories and hydrogenated fats. During the 2008 recession, revenues in Whole Foods Inc. dropped as this company struggled to meet its operation costs with a receding number of shoppers, this caused the company to close some of its stores in Britain for failing to meet is profitability targets (Market, 2008).

Whole Foods Market has evolved into one of the largest retailers of natural and organic foods. This company 's rapid growth and market success has to do with being a mission-driven company. Whole Foods is highly selective about what they sell and are dedicated to their core values. Whole Food 's integrated strategy consists of growth, differentiation, merchandising, and customer service. This strategic plan was aimed at expanding its operations to offer high quality and nutritious foods to more and more customers. It was also aimed at promoting organically grown foods, food safety concerns, and sustainability of the entire ecosystem.

For my individual assignment, I chose the company Whole Foods Market (WFM) which deals in selling products that are organic and fresh to its customers. WFM was founded by John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy, owners of Safer Way Natural Foods, and Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery in Austin, Texas where the original store opened in 1980 and consisted of a staff of only 19 people. WFM was founded because those four local businesspeople decided the natural foods industry was ready for a supermarket format and at that time there were less than half a dozen natural food supermarkets in the United States (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company-info/whole-foods-market-history). For the rest of this paper, I will be going more in depth about the company’s history and background, why I chose this company, the organization’s environment, mission, culture, and if the company will change or needs to change.

Whole Foods Market, incorporated on August 15, 1980, is the world’s leading retailer of natural and organic foods and America’s first national “Certified Organic” grocer. Since 2012, Whole Foods Market operated 335 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Depend on 2011 sales rankings from Progressive Grocer, Whole Foods Market became the largest retailer of natural and organic foods in the U.S. and the 11th largest food retailer overall. Today Whole Foods Market consists of 32000 employees and owns stores average 38,000 square feet in size and 10 years in age, and the scale of Whole Foods Market is continue growing through mergers, acquisitions and new store opening

Whole Foods strategy performed sound well from a strategic perspective. Whole Foods Market became a leader in the organic and natural retailer WFM’s strategy seems to have produced a successful outcomes. Whole Food Market has totally 379 stores with 15 000 square feet- 75000 squared feet in 2014 and become the largest and biggest retailer in the organic and natural segments. Whole Food Market picks target metropolitan areas with the growth of 10-23 stores per year since 1991. These stores often located in the high – traffic shopping locations on premier real estate site.

This case provides an excellent illustration of how this relatively small retail chain can thrive in the face of a dominant market leader. In addition, the key is positioning away from the strengths of the competition, creating your own unique and distinct position. Successful in doing this Whole Foods has brilliantly identified a retail segment of shoppers who are not interested in the items that prevalent mass discount retailers deliver.

The company’s mixture of collective knowledge and core capabilities in the natural food industry has allowed Whole Foods the competency to not only establish a solid brand recognition in this market, but has afforded them the opportunity to remain competitive in the grocery industry. Their effective organizational development, integrated with the team of five senior executives, who function as a CEO team, collaboratively make decisions in all facets of the company’s strategic initiatives.

Whole foods is an established chain with a multitude of loyal customers, and now Amazon is able to tap into this customer base. I foresee Amazon implementing new technological and managerial advancements in the existing and future Whole Foods locations within the coming years. The AmazonGo store model thrives off of providing efficient interactions with customers while cutting out many employees in the process. Since 2015, the stock price of Whole Foods was at a steady decline due in partly to the way employees were hired and managed. Amazon has a great deal of experience managing their staff efficiently from its e-commerce platform, so this change of management should work wonders on the amount of staffing problems within Whole Foods as well. By reanalyzing Whole Food’s staffing needs, Amazon should be able to turn the company around into a profitable investment in the near

From the pitfall that I have found, there are several things that Whole Foods Market needs to improve, which are organic foods and green suppliers. Start with organic foods; although Whole Foods Market faces with high competitive in the market, they cannot avoid or pay less attention on their practice or commitment. The company should encourage more and provide a supportive education on green practice and sustainable agriculture to not only organic farmers but also conventional farmers by showing them benefits of doing sustainable agriculture. The second thing is a green supplier that the company gives the commitment with customers. The company needs to pay more responsibility

There is much speculation about whether Whole Foods has done enough to shed its Whole Paycheck reputation in order to remain competitive in the current food retailing industry. Consumer demand has transformed what originally was a natural and organic food retailer – a niche market – into the fastest growing U.S. food seller (Gamble, Peteraf, & Thompson, 2017). Whole Foods original strategy was to provide the highest quality product at the most competitive prices possible. However in 2007-08, following the recession, they adapted their strategy and began to focus on value and controlling cost. When Whole Foods opened they used a focused differentiation strategy, concentrating on a narrow buyer market and meeting the needs of very specific customer base (Gamble et al., 2017). Realizing that their strategy was not necessarily sustainable in the long-term, they adjusted their strategy and began to appeal to a broader customer base with a focus on quality and value.

The reasons why the Whole Foods Market has grown over the years is that it has a very ambidextrous organizational structure, wherein it imbibes both mechanistic and organic structures. As the CEO of the company points out that, the store workers do not have to wait for their managers to make the decisions