Bob's Supermarket

When an organization seeks to be competitive, they typically seek to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Every organization seeks to gain a competitive advantage, but maintaining it is harder even still. For Bob’s supermarket, the invasion of franchised organizations, along with higher employee wages and rising product cost, Bob and Sam Thompson needed to employee a strategic change that defined where they intended to move the organization in the future and what avenues they would entertain to reach those goals. Bob was admitted less interested in the marketing and human resource side of the business. In reference to marketing, Bob needs to understand, “increased internal pressure to make marketing accountable, combined with market

The values are often instilled at an early age and often have a relationship to religion, cultural make up, ethnicity and even trends, but they are typically always forces the consumer holds in a high esteem. Bob’s Supermarket entered 2008 with many economic pressures, but it also had social changes in the environment that caused Bob and Sam Thompson’s profitability in their two supermarkets to struggle. One of the biggest issues as it relates to the market viability for Bob’s Supermarket is, as our text’s author indicates, “as with other macro environmental forces—but especially with social forces—it is important to outline how each key force has affected the industry and organization to date and to address how each will likely influence the industry in the future” (p.89). The author is referring to a list of social forces that a manager can utilize to specifically address the influence they have on an industry. Since the economic downturn of 2008, families have begun to pay much closer attention to specifically where household income is being spent. Though Bob reports his staff’s polite and caring demeanor are a large part of the attraction to his supermarket, socio economic issues related to the market downturn has made the fact, Bob’s milk for instance is $4.09 per gallon as compared to competitors at $2.32, $2.09, $2.99 to name a few, and this relates directly

Some organizations believe the act of selling a product, and a consumer purchasing it, is the extent to which CSR is needed. The consumer needed a product and the store met the social need by providing it. Other organizations have a much more holistic approach to CSR and believe the stores involvement in every facet of social responsibility is the organizations inherent duty. Most organizations fall somewhere in the middle. Bob’s Supermarket has struggled economically and the change in the social environment has led many consumers to have a much more hands on access to what and how an organization is doing, or doing it. Social media has become an outlet for consumers to sing the praises, or degrade an organization, with little litigious reproach. Bob’s management team is reportedly not very active in the community, yet wants to foster a community vibe that creates long time consumers for his organization, who are willing to pay more for similar products just for the ambiance of his supermarket. This supermarket has very little ambiance and the community has been given little reason to give patronage to the supermarket. The most damming issue for change is societal trends. The trends have not only for strip mall takeovers, but businesses such as Wal-Mart, Dollar General, CVS and many others have expanded in