Sainsbury’s PLC is a major retailing supermarket based in England. Sainsbury’s provide a service to there consumers. There service consists of providing there customers with domestic grocery and in many store electrical appliances such as television, DVD players and many other electrical appliances. There main rivals in this sector are Tesco’s, Marks and Spencer’s, Asda and Morrison’s. Sainsbury’s have more then 758 stores including local Sainsbury’s.
This essay will discuss the different aspect of Sainsbury’s such as the hierarchy structure of Sainsbury’s Heaton Park, the environmental condition for this store and how Sainsbury’s Heaton Park take’s advantages of there surrounding environmental conditions. This report will also look into how Sainsbury’s try to take advantage of the economical environment situation such as the credit crunch. Also this report will discuss how the structural dimensions differ from Sainsbury’s Heaton Park to the Local Sainsbury’s stores. A questionnaire will be produced to ask the manager of Heaton Park Sainsbury’s the different aspects of the organization.
Questions such as the structural dimensions of Sainsbury’s, how the manager re-organizes the store when busy, how the surrounding environments affect this particular store and some more questions about Sainsbury’s in general. Competitive Edge In 2004 Sainsbury’s invested heavily into there distribution system, this in the end didn’t work and business was down. Consumers were looking else where for there products and for Sainsbury’s inability to keep shelves stocked was causing them to lose custom to there main rival’s in the shape of Tesco’s, Asda and other big supermarkets.
Customers were complaining about the fact that they were not getting value for there money and moved away to Sainsbury’s main rival. In response to this Sainsbury’s needed a way to get a competitive edge against its rivals. Sainsbury’s needed to cope with hypercompetition (Organization Contemporary Principles And Practice John Child) and stay ahead of there rivals, they invested into out of town stores as well as small convenience stores called Sainsbury’s Local.
These Local Sainsbury’s would be located on the high street attracting new customers like high street workers. This response from Sainsbury’s gave them a competitive edge against Asda’s, Morrison and other leading supermarkets who haven’t invested in small convenience stores. Hypecompetition also means having new innovated ideas that rivals organizations don’t have, these ideas have to be unique to match new opportunities. With Britain trying to become healthier, Sainsbury’s introduced a five year scheme of Active Kids.
This scheme was not in place by any other supermarket’s and Sainsbury’s had another competitive edge against there main rival’s. Active kids is a scheme where consumers buy healthy products to gain Active Kids vouchers that can be collected and exchanged for sports equipments by schools. From this innovation Sainsbury’s sales grew and attracted new custom. Other methods that Sainsbury’s use to keep a competitive edge is that they have price check adverts around there stores comparing prices against main rivals.
They also do regular training programs to keep staff up-to-date with customer service training. Serve with a smile is a new training scheme, colleagues must stop what they are doing and help customer straight away with a smile. Customer Loyalty Sainsbury’s have a loyalty card service called the Nectar Card. This card basically monitors customers buying behavior in categories and the brands that they buy. These cards will hold data about the customer’s products and in response a monthly discount voucher is sent for there range of products or a discount on their next shop.
These cards will also add up points, for every 1. 00 the customer spends two points are added to their card. Every 250 points the customer gets 2. 50 of there shop. Alternately the customer can add these points up and redeem them for anything from a TV to a Holiday. This loyalty service also has magazines e-mailed to registered users. The magazine is called Sainsbury’s Fresh Idea’s that contains discount vouchers and recipe’s for cooking. The magazine also ties into Sainsbury’s motto ‘Try Something New Today’.
This part of the essay will look at the structural dimensions of Sainsbury’s Heaton Park, this structural dimension will be compared to Sainsbury’s Local and how the two same companies differ to each other. The structural dimension that will be looked at will be formalization, specialization, hierarchy of authority, centralization and professionalism (R L Daft 2007, Understanding The Theory And Design Of Organizations). Each section will discuss the importance of each section of the structural dimension.
