Environmental Scan of Publix
To a larger extent, the performance of a firm or a business enterprise is one of the major objectives of all the stakeholders. Essentially, the success of a business depends on the alignment of its competitive strategies regarding the environment they operate on. As the name goes, Environmental scanning refers to the process of systematically carrying out surveys and interpreting the relevant data with the aim of identifying not only external opportunities but also the threats. As such, a particular business collects information about the external environment or the world which comprises itself and its competitors. As a response to the gathered information, a company might change its plans and strategies whenever the need arises.in a close focus on Public Company, the study will perform an environmental scan focusing on it external and general environment as well as the its competitive advantage within its business environ.
Essentially, the process of environmental scan entails several steps. In summary, this steps revolves around gathering information, focusing on competition based on; emerging trends, opportunities, and the prevalent threats. This is followed by an internal scan of a particular organization and finally data analysis and identification of changes that need implementation. Most importantly, during the process of conducting an environmental scan, the process of data collection should involve focus groups, publications, leadership inside and outside the organization, civic associations, media and the library (Kuratko, Hornsby, & Covin, 2014). This paper presents an environmental scan for PUBLIX with the aim of coming up with ideas and strategies that would promote value creation and sustainability of competitive advantage. Moreover, the paper will study both the external and general environment, and the organization’s industry operating environment.
Create value and sustain competitive advantage
As one of the largest employee-owned grocery in America, Publix has come a long way and experienced tremendous growth since 1930. That is from a single store to many across different parts of the United States. However, the extended stay in the American market comes with its own risks most specifically the apparent competition from various competitors. Therefore, there is a need for Publix to embark on drawn strategies that would uphold value creation and sustain their competitive advantage. To begin with, strategies that would promote value creation, Publix should focus more on customer service (Kuratko, Hornsby, & Covin, 2014).
Apparently, the company needs to be involved in several activities that drawback to providing premier services to the customers. These services include improvement of the primary operations. Moreover, Publix should come up with a strategy support group. This group should come up with new and promising ideas on improvement of the services they are offering. Nevertheless, in supply chain automation and associate training programs, the company should be in a position of enhancing customer experience. Despite the adoption and implementation of the aforementioned strategies, the growing intensity of competitors in the retail industry poses a challenge to the overall existence of Publix especially the emergence of new competitors, technologies, and formats.
Moreover, the regular …