Question

Assume you are the CEO of a regional grocery store. The company currently has 25 brick and mortar stores located in three different states in the Southeast. All are located in small towns where there are no Wal-Marts or Targets. Top management is working on its strategic plan for the next five years. Some important decisions that need to be made include the following: is the company going to expand to more states, will the company expand its e-commerce platform (including home delivery), and will it expand into larger cities. What kind of decision-making process will you use? Once decisions are made, what is the best way to implement its strategic plan?

Answer 1

Decision making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. The process adopts a step-by-step decision-making process that can help make more deliberate, thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives. Hence the 5-year plan for the business has to take few decisions for its next 5 years operations. Hence a step by step approach has to be adopted as:

· The resources of the business would suggest its ability to be present in different states with a brick and Mortar model of a small town where the big competitors are not there.

· The business cant compete there where the businesses of such grocers are already there which makes the risk high to be in the big cities those have such outlets,

· The use of e-commerce has to be adopted for the future which would enhance the market capacity to be expanded and be following the marketing plan.

· The home delivery would be a part of this expansion since this makes sure that the cost of brick and mortar is saved to give the consumers the best of value for money.

Hence the business would have to develop a presence in other states in demographics where the large competitors are not there. The home delivery aspect has to be such that the app-based platforms can be made in the new locations. The low cost of going into e-commerce would be easy and cheap to expand into the market away from the Southeast to new ones where the competence of Wal-Mart or Target is achieved by the business but in a demographics which is yet to experience such stores.