Whole Foods Company is the main retailer of organic and natural foods. It is also the US’s first grocer with certification. Founded in 1978 and opened its first center in 1980 at Austin, Texas. They completed their public offering in 1992 and stock trades under WFM on NASDAQ Market. The company aims at enhancing the vitality and wellness of everyone through supply of quality goods, mostly wholesome. Purity of food and health is dependent on a pure environment; the company’s main mission is thus, to enhance the ecosystem, healthy-eating and eating of organic foods. In this article, I will dig deeper how the company is rating now, its competitors, opportunities available and threats present in the Whole Foods Market.
The product range of Whole Foods Market include produced grocery, prepared foods, seafood, floral, meat, catering, tea, coffee, wine, cheese, bear, lifestyle and household products, vitamins and many others. Its stores are based in the United States and Canada. Their products carry a health logo showing they are quality for human consumption. Their large sizes make it possible for it to access a larger scale. However, as the well economized areas reach saturation, the company has started setting up stores in less economized areas where its competitors have established themselves already for example Walmart. Walmart is known for its low prices, thus making it difficult for Whole Foods and their premium prices to get customers. This is among some of the threats faced by the company (Berman, 2010).
The company’s growth has been promoted by environmental awareness, considering the customer’s concern over pure and healthy foods, a wealthier and well-educated population whose average age is now going to increase because of the healthy organic products and educating people on the importance of healthy eating in promoting long life. Whole Foods sells high quality products both organic and natural, satisfies the needs of its customers, supports team-building and excellence, adds capital through numerous profits, serves the local communities and global too, practices environmental concern, creates strong partnerships and last but not least promotes health of its consumers (Guskey, 2014).
Further analysis of the company, will reveal that that the company is fragment. The evolving world of grocery industries is being molded by consumer trends and this has shaken up the industry due to continuous change in customer needs. In early times, women were the only shoppers of grocery products but in the recent times men and children have been incorporated into the activity. Research shows that half of the grocery shopping is done by men. Technology is also a requirement in today’s era of shopping. People hate getting bored as they stand in the queues; therefore, it is important for them to get some entertainment to relieve themselves.
Google Maps enable customers to get a virtual view of the stores and GPS assists in providing real text coupons. Stores need to be brought closer to consumers because long gone are the days where retailers expected customers to come to them. This day’s consumers want the retailers to come to them so that they can purchase products. This can be done by establishing stores near them or online shopping. Fresh products are of importance to customers and this leads to grocery stores providing them with healthy and less processed products like the historical days, when the industries were not available (Smith, 2014).
Customers have the largest retail food variety now than ever before, due to the fact that more people are setting up grocers. Competition has immensely increased resultantly. The retail centers vary from convenience stores to supermarkets to supercenters. Food retailers, one of them, Whole Foods, experience a great amount of competition. A large competitor in this industry is Walmart Supercenter, which the largest grocery retailer is offering all the necessary products under one roof. Additional competition emanates from restaurants which offer take out services, especially fast food stores (Pitchford, 2002).
Consumers spend more than half of their income on fast food nowadays compared to early days. The top retailers in America only control a third of the economy unlike in the United Kingdom, Germany and France which is 50, 60 and 90 percent respectively. There is also an emerging trend where people prefer to shop in small convenient stores rather going to the supersized ones. They argue that there is a higher chance of finding fresh produce there that in large centers. Other products of small niche stores are fresh prepared meals, organic, gourmet and ethnic foods. Grocery stores are continuously looking for ways to inspire and capture the attention of consumers by updating new products and technologies. This is the reason why Whole Foods want to change how people buy goods and vegetables. It has come up with an idea called “Responsibly Grown” The initiative will rate farm products depending on farm practices, as good, better and best. Shoppers will be educated on the different sets of farm products. The ratings will analyze everything from impact on climate, air, reduction of waste, energy, usage of water, preservation of the ecosystem and biodiversity.
Whole Foods promotes transparency in plant produce, animal produce and seafood. All this is in a bid to satisfy its customers and eradicate competition from the fast developing pool off retailers. Despite all this, there has been a reduction in profits contrast to efforts put in. Whole Foods must come up with a way to balance the sale of their brands at affordable price and the idea of expansion of centers. They should introduce offers of high grade conventional products in addition to organic products that will provide a wide range of choices. In simple terms creating low price options for a large number of people (Pitchford, 2002). Assisting buyers to make informed choices about what they buy, separates them from other retailers who do not offer transparency and creates their identity in the market for success. Whole Foods does not support local and small scale farmers completely as they state in their banners. They do a lot of importing of products from countries like Chile, known for its tomatoes. The banners are encouraging but they mislead customers regarding what they are paying premiums for. Critics have also termed the company as a paycheck for the wealthy. This is the reason why many of its customers have run off to Walmart. Just because the company sells organic products, they should not make it look like a luxury (Berman, 2010).
Walmart, therefore, with its motto of “less for more” will definitely be the choice of the nation. The movement towards eating of organic foods will only increase the wide gap between the rich and the poor, with healthy food for the rich. Whole Foods have a strategy that involves democracy and discipline in management and work. It is a fierce society whose aim is promoting productivity. The base of management is teamwork where everyone is encouraged to be an innovator and creator. This creates a motivating environment for the employees hence they enjoy their jobs and as well as getting good pay. Whole Foods works according to three principles: the first one is team members who have a sense of self-direction. The teams meet often to discuss and solve the problems faced by the company. The members have complete trust in each other since this is a requirement in keeping things in order. The teams have the right to deliberate on hiring of individuals for full-time jobs. They also compete against other teams in the company to improve their performance. The second principle is empowerment, used to promote innovation. Organizations that practice empowerment are at a higher level since they tap all the ideas in workers. It involves the ability to be responsible for one’s successes and negative outcomes (Hoffman & Allen, 2011).
Once a person is able to identify his shortcomings and success, he or she learns how to celebrate the good outcomes and treat failures as a learning process. A business should generally view employees as sources not resources. The last principle is experience of customers and products. Whole Foods is committed towards creating customers for the business. They constantly improve the types of food they offer to delight their customers. Customers are the major stakeholders of the business and it is only by satisfying them, are we able to satisfy other stakeholders. Employees at the company are the best at advertising and selling their products. They do so with a lot of passion to convince the buyers. Whole food also has a page on Facebook and Twitter called Pinterest where they post about their activities. The site enjoys the following of a large number of people, though, the amount can be improved by posting more often. Recipes are posted on Pinterest of Scrumptious meals though the picture quality is not the best. Their followers are more than those of the competitors and this is encouraging (Fisher &Vallaster, 2010).
The site has special names that are quite creative and the descriptions are good. This is unique because it has never happened prior, where an organization interacts so well socially with its fan base. They pin a variety of healthy wholesome meals that the followers can try out at home. High performers in the grocery market are dedicated towards maintaining the best rates at the same time running cost effective control applications. E-commerce has also been acknowledged as a barrier that disrupts Whole Foods. A small percentage of food is sold online according to estimates. But with change in technology, Amazon, for example, is willing to bear the costs of customer delivery services to promote online sale of grocery products. Further research shows the difficulty facing e-commerce industries in handling of business. There are a lot of disadvantages in selling groceries online like complex logistics, cost of shipping, quality and freshness of the orders. The advantage, however, is that a buyer can get access to some products which are unavailable in the areas they stay. Whole foods retain their employees unlike other companies such as Walmart, because it hires them through rigorous selection. Every employee must undergo a 90 day probation period and then after face evaluation from the management and teams. After the evaluation process, a vote is carried out to decide whether the worker should be given the job permanently. This process aids the improvement of the staff’s decision-making. Using this short survey, we can manage to pinpoint the areas that require modification in the company and outline the opportunities available out there for expanding and going with the flow of technology (Fisher &Vallaster, 2010).
We also notice that Whole Foods Company is good at what it does by promoting consumer welfare, empowering its employees, providing incentives, creating mobility and professional growth. The successes and failures of Whole Foods is a reflection of modern leadership styles. The manager, John Mackey, understands the conditions that improve the workforce and with this little change to be made one is quite sure that the company will become an icon in grocery markets. We can therefore, conclude that Whole Foods should look into promoting the local products, going digital and looking into the gap that is being created between the rich and the poor. They should also come up with ideas to compete against other companies and improving their position in the Whole Foods Market. The best way is to change their failures by learning from them to create a better future for the company. In general, Whole Foods seems to be a stable company with few threats that can be easily solved. It is can be used as a good example to other upcoming organizations since it utilizes teamwork, conserves the environment and satisfies consumer needs.
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