Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Ch. 2 - Strategic Planning for Competitive Advantage

Foot Locker's mission statement is to be the leading global retailer of athletically inspired shoes and apparel. With their many Strategic Business Units (SBUs), such as Foot Action, Kids Footlocker, Lady Foot Locker, Champs, Eastbay, and Foot Locker International, Foot Locker is recognized as the leading footwear retailer in the United States.

Footlocker SWOT Analysis

Strengths: Foot locker has very strong business relationships. For many years, Foot locker has maintained a tight relationship with NIKE. In fact, each of Foot Locker's SBUs purchased between 39% and 80% of total merchandise from this single vendor. The companies help each other because while Nike is thriving, Foot locker is thriving also. Foot locker also has a strong executive team, they are well experienced. That is imperative in order to out-strategize the competition while still achieving corporate goals and objectives.

Weaknesses: One of Foot locker's weaknesses is that there has been a decline in foot traffic in it's mall-based stores. This has resulted in many store closings. Management noted in their most recent earnings report that by the end of this calendar year, 40 more store will schedule to close. Another weakness is high employee turnover. This is occurring because they have well over 40,000 employees, whom are mostly getting paid minimum wage.

Opportunities: Foot locker definitely has the opportunity to improve. One way they could, is to be more diverse in manufacturers. They can build relationships with smaller brands, which will attract more customers and build profit.

Threats: One of the threats against Foot locker, like any other company is COMPETITION. Just a small portion of inventory is exclusively sold at Foot locker, so the fact that customers can go elsewhere to get the same product is already a red light. It is for that reason that store location, reputation, and advertising play such a huge role in the company's success.

No comments:

Post a Comment