Whole Foods Market in 2008: Vision, Core Values, and Strategy
1) Background
Whole Foods Market, established in 1980, took 27 years to build up its brand equity and became a leader in natural and organic foods across the United States. The sales of Whole Foods Market kept increasing and generated profit every year except in the year 2000. Ever since the first Whole Foods Market opened in Austin, Texas, more and more people began to know about it and had more access to natural and organic foods. Consumers want to buy natural and organic foods because they believe that these foods were fresh and healthy without any chemical add-on. Hence natural and organic foods retailing turned into the fastest-growing segment in the U.S.
2) Current Strategy and Analysis of Issues
The core value of Whole Foods was “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Plant”. They cared about their foods, their staff, their customers, as well as the environment, so they came up with many strategies, which are listed as follow:
i. Expanded the company by opening new stores and acquiring attractive candidates. Due to the growth need of the company, acquisition was a good way to roll. The biggest acquisition for Whole Foods was the purchase of its biggest competitor, Wild Oats Market, in 2007. This gave Whole Foods an easy way to enter into new big cities and even new states, but meanwhile costs of capital were large too. According to the failure of Wild Oats Market, which generated excessive debt from acquisition, Whole Foods should watch out and avoid this kind of mistake happen. ii. Opened larger new stores and reallocated smaller old stores to bigger sites, which were more visible and had more parking spaces. Whole Foods preferred to locate stores in busy shopping spots and premier real estate sites. They usually did analysis of education levels, population density, income levels, sales projection and many other factors before they locate a store. Besides, parking space was a very important factor to sales of a supermarket, especially for Whole
Whole Foods Market, established in 1980, took 27 years to build up its brand equity and became a leader in natural and organic foods across the United States. The sales of Whole Foods Market kept increasing and generated profit every year except in the year 2000. Ever since the first Whole Foods Market opened in Austin, Texas, more and more people began to know about it and had more access to natural and organic foods. Consumers want to buy natural and organic foods because they believe that these foods were fresh and healthy without any chemical add-on. Hence natural and organic foods retailing turned into the fastest-growing segment in the U.S.
2) Current Strategy and Analysis of Issues
The core value of Whole Foods was “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Plant”. They cared about their foods, their staff, their customers, as well as the environment, so they came up with many strategies, which are listed as follow:
i. Expanded the company by opening new stores and acquiring attractive candidates. Due to the growth need of the company, acquisition was a good way to roll. The biggest acquisition for Whole Foods was the purchase of its biggest competitor, Wild Oats Market, in 2007. This gave Whole Foods an easy way to enter into new big cities and even new states, but meanwhile costs of capital were large too. According to the failure of Wild Oats Market, which generated excessive debt from acquisition, Whole Foods should watch out and avoid this kind of mistake happen. ii. Opened larger new stores and reallocated smaller old stores to bigger sites, which were more visible and had more parking spaces. Whole Foods preferred to locate stores in busy shopping spots and premier real estate sites. They usually did analysis of education levels, population density, income levels, sales projection and many other factors before they locate a store. Besides, parking space was a very important factor to sales of a supermarket, especially for Whole