Question

Why did Whole Foods end up being "stuck in the middle"?

Answer 1

The Whole Foods is a supermarket founded and headquartered in the United States which specializes in selling food products which completely free from organic, hydrogenated fats, artificial colors, and external preservatives. It has been widely classified or identified as grocery and health food store. Now, as the business organization or company predominantly adopting differentiated business and operational strategies, Whole Foods supermarket gradually started facing various competitive challenges and threats mainly from small-scale low-cost competitors such as Kroger and other local grocery supermarket companies as they began offering organic food products at affordable prices. The low price products sold by these companies essentially attracted consumers from diversed economic backgrounds thereby significantly contributing to their increasing market share and sales revenue. As the market penetration and revenue generation of other small-scale and low-cost food grocery companies and supermarket increased significantly thereby intensifying the competitive threats to Whole Foods, the company management decided to retaliate by implementing various cost-reductionist strategies such as laying off staffs and employees mainly from lower level of management and eliminating nearly 2000 jobs. The management also implemented centralization of certain operational activities and functions and streamlined operational processes in order to increase overall business efficiency. The company CEO John Mackey described or characterized these administrative measures as attempts to minimize redundancy and waste and upheld the mission, organizational culture, and market reputation for which the Whole Foods supermarket company has been known for. Therefore, despite maintaining a stable market position, the Whole Foods company faces the risks of some serious competitive threats which could possibly affect its market reputation and commercial dominance in the market and hence, the company management would have to undertake certain measures to cope with the lower growth rates. Therefore, this entire scenario confronting the Whole Foods supermarket is portrayed or described as "stuck in the middle".

Reference

http://michael-roberto.blogspot.com/2016/02/whole-foods-could-it-get-stuck-in-middle.html#:~:text=The%20company%20may%20get%20caught,by%20the%20Wall%20Street%20Journal.