Question

In 500 or more words, address the following:

Describe how Whole Foods built its competitive advantage.

What IT assets and capabilities does Whole Foods utilize?

Assess Whole Foods' competitive environment by describing the following five competitive forces:

1. The potential threat of new entrants/competitors
2. The bargaining power of buyers
3. The bargaining power of suppliers
4. The threat of substitute products/services
5. Industry competitors

Answer 1

Competitive Advantages of Whole Foods:

• Whole Food is one of the biggest multi-national company focused on supermarket stuff which has fitness advantage from the same food delivered by some other online market which helps them in creating a strong brand identity.
• Creating a strong and far-reaching audience is one of the major competitive advantages that the company has. Apart from this, the company has also well established it for the products that they are selling which are far more concerned on the fitness along with the same taste.
• They provide with a quality customer service which is also an addon to the list. They are also having a very loyal customer base which helps them in maintaining the reputation of the company go on.
• They are also working along with good policies for the employees and the labors that are working for the company. The standards are being raised with the help of the companies ultimately high standard and quality products that each of the consumer loves.
• The Whole Foods organization has been a leading company in terms of organic food and almost share most of the market share. With the help of the sales that the company carries on, there is also a sudden surge in the number of active users.
• As we all know that pointing out the sales it becomes easy for the consumer to get the products on their wish prize and increase the sales of the company from which both are being profited and making this work for a while with such strategy has become common in the e-commerce industry.
• Whole Food works with normal IT assets which each and every e-commerce companies are making use of such as:
  • Big Data
  • Database Technologies
  • Cloud Computing
  • Web application Development Technologies
    • jQuery
    • Javascript (Angular, Node.JS, etc)
    • AJAX
    • Python
  • Data Mining
  • Web Data Extraction
  • OLAP
  • Cyber Security
• These are some of the assets or technologies that Whole Food is using in order to keep their virtual existence safe and secure in order to serve their customers on a timely basis making the organization explode with the customers.
• All these technologies are used so that the customer feels safe while transacting and keeping relations with the organization because the customer's trust is all that is needed in the end. If the customer is not satisfied it becomes tough to stay in the market.
• There are many competitors for the organization such as:
  • Amazon Pantry
  • Trader Joe's
  • Sprout Farmers Market
• These rival companies also have good market capitalization and are at their initial stage for growth in the industry. They also are behind Whole Foods because of the fact that they existed in the market earlier than them and have a very good customer base which becomes hard to break for most of the organizations who serve with quality.

Hence, these are how the Whole Foods organization keep up with the technologies and help the people in getting the best quality products at the lowest prices and in an efficient way.