1. If the Williams-Sonoma continues with its present strategies and objectives, where will it be in five years?
If Williams-Sonoma would continue using these growth strategies, with the objective of leading and capturing a substantial market share of the specialty retail store market for home products, it is plausible that the organization would have continued to increase their number of retail outlets, developed more mail-order catalogs and expanded e-commerce accordingly. Likewise, they have persistently exhibited an aggressive growth strategy stance that appropriately captured opportunities in the ever-changing external market. Since the organization has aptly established a firm hold of the e-commerce medium, from as early as 1999, they have gained exemplary expertise in developing strategies through online medium, in conjunction with retaining direct mail-order catalogs to provide current and potential customers with opportunities to visualize the products being offered. However, since it was noted that there were increasing competition due to the low entry barriers and the proliferation of using the internet as a medium of sales, it could be expected that Williams-Sonoma’s share in the specialty retail market for home-based products could also diminish within the five-year time frame.
2. If you were the CEO of William-Sonoma, what strategies would you recommend, and why?
If I were the CEO of William-Sonoma, I would recommend strategies that would focus on focusing on e-commerce due to the orientation of contemporary clients to use this medium for purchases. Likewise, William-Sonoma could forge agreements with suppliers and other sources of products (furniture) deliver selected products by customers shopping online from their warehouses directly to the customers’ locations. This would eliminate the need to lease warehouses or distribution facilities, and would therefore contribute to lesser overhead and costs to maintain large inventories of furniture and other products that were previously held on as inventories.
Likewise, I would order for a re-assessment and evaluation of the performance of each retail store to determine which are performing well and which need to be closed, if needed. A financial evaluation of the performance of each retail outlet would enable one to view the contribution to overall profit of each retail store and determine if there is a need to continue operations of any of the outlets based on consistency, sales volume, response to competition, and other factors that could contribute to its overall financial performance.
Finally, since e-commerce is gaining strength, where customers have signified increasing trends for purchasing various products online, William-Sonoma should focus on this medium to determine any need to develop their online website, in terms of its ability to generate orders from various clients, their effectiveness in meeting delivery schedules, as well as in their ability to collect through defined collection methods or intermediaries that should be accessible and preferred by online clientele.
Reference
Rouse, M.M. (2005). “Internet Mini-Case #6: Williams-Sonoma.” Web Mini Cases: Pearson
Higher Education. Retrieved 15 March 2013,
< http://www.pearsonhighered.com/wheelen/cases.html>
