Environmental Analysis:-

Strengths:-
The most important strength that we possess is our value to satisfy the customer in every possible
way by understanding their buying behaviour in detail.

 Our supermarket provides Personalised Services to working professionals who don’t have
the time to spend on supermarket shopping.
 We have designed Innovative Product packages to carter to monthly and weekly grocery
needs of the customers
 We have invested in market research and have acquired insight into customer buying
behaviour, we have also acquired strong customer data base.
 We provide the facility of shopping online via e-commerce.
 We have easy to navigate website and easy to operate mobile application that enables easy
grocery shopping.
 We also provide the same website shopping facilities via m-commerce (Mobile application).
 We plan to trade mark our product package.

Weakness:-
 We don’t have any advantage of bulk purchase and thus we cannot fully compete on price.
 There is High start-up cost.
 High cost of establishing brand awareness and brand image.
 No innovation in the supply chain strategy

Opportunity:-
 As there is very low customer loyalty in the market it would be easy to attract new
customers and increase market share quickly.
 Change in buying behaviour and customer needs.
 Fragmented market gives us the opportunity to increase our market share without being
dominated by one big supermarket.
 Word of mouth publicity is very common in the current market as customers are well
connected and inform each other about new happenings in the market.

Threats:-
 The current is highly price sensitive.
 Loyalty usually depends on price
 High start-up capital may be required for the products and services that we aim to offer.
 There is a big Price war going on between competitors and thus it would be difficult to
compete on price.
 Many small mini marts are opening close to residential buildings to take advantage of the
location.
 Due to its cosmopolitan population there is always a threat of Change in Taste and buying
patterns of the customers.
 If we are unable to sell all categories of products there could be a possibility of Shrink in our
supermarkets
  The biggest threat is that the existing supermarkets would buy us out in order to avoid
reduction in their market share.

TOWS Matrix: - This tool is used to create strategic options by simply combining strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats.After detailed analysis of strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats it helps us in understanding how to use the external environment to our
strategic advantage and identify the available strategic options that we currently have.

Strengths Opportunities (Maxi – Maxi strategy):- In this section we discuss the how our
strengths will help us maximize our opportunities. Through our personalised services and innovative
product packages e can take maximum advantage of the low customer loyalty in the market and
increase our market share quickly. One of our strengths is that we have invested in market research
and customer buying behaviour and so we can take maximum advantage of the changing buying
behaviour and we can be the first to alter our services to maximise market share .By providing best
possible services we can motivate the customers to recommend us to their social group and thus
take maximum advantage of the word of mouth publicity that exists in the market.

Strengths Threats (Maxi-Mini strategy):- In this section we discuss how we can use strengths to
minimize threats. Through product and service innovation and giving customer the facility to place
order on mobile while they are travelling in metro or in bus we can tackle the high price sensitivity in
the market and minimize the risk of losing customers due to the existing price war .Apart from this
we can minimize supermarket shrink by selling most of our products through e-commerce and m-
commerce. We also plan to trademark our product package so that the big supermarkets cannot
introduce similar product in market as soon as our packages become popular.

Weakness Opportunities (Mini- Maxi Strategy):- In this section we discuss how we can
minimize our weaknesses by taking advantage of opportunities. Due to word of mouth publicity we
can reduce our brand awareness cost dramatically.

Weakness Threat (Mini – Mini Strategy):- In this section we discuss strategies that minimize
weakness and avoid threats. The most important factor to focus In order to minimize our threat and
weaknesses is to avoid market share depletion and customer retention. In order to achieve this we
have to maximize brand awareness and highlight positive points of our product packages and
services. By this sustain our profits and maintain market share. Apart from this by analysing the
customer buying behaviour we can predict the shift in buying trend which will help us to introduce
new services and product packages at the right time to retain our customers.
Porters 5 force analysis:-
Bargaining power of buyers(High):- The bargaining power of the buyers is very high in the
supermarket business as the customers have no switching cost and can easily switch from one
supermarket to other furthermore the customers are highly price sensitive and are willing to try new
products which are cheaper than the existing ones . Due to many brands for one product it is difficult
to retain customers who have a habit of using new brands and products on a daily basis.

Bargaining power of supplier (Low): - The bargaining power of the suppliers is low in this
business as far as labour suppliers are concerned the bargaining power is very low due to the current
recession in Dubai market, there is availability of cheap labour from many sources. The bargaining
power of food producers is also low as they are highly dependent on retailers for their sales and
distribution. Overall the bargaining power of suppliers remains low.

Threat of new entrant (Medium): - The threat of new entrants is medium because there are
motivating and demotivating factors in the supermarket business. Supporting factors include low
customer loyalty and low business start-up time it is possible to buy an existing supermarket update
it and apply new pricing strategy and start the supermarket. Demotivating points include the act that
big supermarket chains an impose a serious threat by reducing their costs to a level that the new
entrant crashes out of the market and unless there is product or service innovation it would be very
difficult to compete on price with existing supermarket chains.

Threat of substitute (High): - The threat of substitute is always high in the supermarket business
as there are multiple variants in customer buying behaviour for example if a product that the
customer does not want to change is available in the nearby super market the customer would be
willing to pay little more and go to the nearby substitute to save time and effort. Similarly if there is a
substitute providing products at same price with better services the threat of substitution becomes
high.

Rivalry among existing competitors (Very high): - There is severe rivalry going on amongst
existing competitors, there is a severe price war between the supermarket giants in the UAE. “The
world’s second-largest retailer, which operates 12 branches in Dubai, charged almost AED35 less
than the most expensive store for the same 17 items, which included a mix of fruit and vegetables,
bread, washing powder and nappies.” (Broomhall, 2016) This statements clearly shows the
difference in price of same products purchased from different supermarkets. Overall it can be
concluded that the rivalry is solely on the price with all supermarkets providing same variety of
products.
Key success factors:-