Whole Food Market's Case

Q1) What is Whole Foods Market’s [WFM] strategy for success in the marketplace? Does the company reply primarily on a customer intimacy, operational excellence, or product leadership as its customer value proposition? You must choose one as its primary strategy, and you may choose a secondary strategy if applicable. What evidence from the assigned documents supports your conclusion(s)?

Whole Foods Market is natural and organic foods supermarket chain, which is the America’s first national certified organic grocer in the world. For the company, customer value is one of the most important components through its quality standards. After Whole Foods Market’s creation in 1980, the company has been working with the same mission of supplying the high-quality and rich nutritional value foods to its customers. In this way, the company has adopted these three approaches, which are shown above in the question; customer intimacy, operational excellence, and product leadership. But, the most dominant is product leadership for this company.

Selling natural, organic products with the highest quality is the company’s selling strategy. For this reason, there is a variety of products such as grocery, meat, seafood, bakery, prepared foods, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, delicatessen, nutritional supplements, even pet products and so on. Through target of high-quality products, Whole Foods Market differs from its competitors in the market. So, the company provides hardly ever unprocessed and artificial-preservatives free products to have more customers. Now, it has more and valuable crowd of customers who prefer more health oriented life.

Q2) In 2014, what major business risks did/does WFM face that may threaten its ability to satisfy stockholder expectations? What are some examples of control activities that the company could use to reduce these risks? [Hint: focus on the Risk Factors section of the 2014 10-K report and choose only the top five that you think are the most...