Competitive Strategies Used by Kmart’s Major Competitors

Competitive strategies used by Kmart’s major competitors

Strategic Management and Business Policy

Competitive strategies used by Kmart’s major competitors

Kmarts competitors used effective methods to become successful. Walmart used the Cost

Leadership method. On page 148 of their book titled, Strategic Management and Business Policy, Thomas L Wheelen and J. David Hunger, cost leadership is defined as, “a lower-cost competitive strategy that aims at the broad mass market and requires “aggressive construction of efficient-scale facilities, vigorous pursuit of cost accounts, and cost reductions from experience, tight cost and overhead control, avoidance of marginal customer accounts, and cost minimization in areas like R & D, service, scales force, advertising, and so on.” This method allows corporations like Wal-Mart to sale products at a lower cost than the competition. Wal-Mart also uses strategic information systems, this allows the relay of information to headquarters via computer technology. This I think is the most effective strategy because it enables the cost leader to offer products at a lower cost than its competitor. You are always a step ahead of the competitor and in many ways control the market.

Sometimes, success can be achieved by changing procedures. For examples, Wheelen and Hunger writes on page 215, “in order to implement Home Depot’s strategic move into services, such as kitchen and bathroom installation, the company had to first improve its productivity. Store managers were drowning in paper work designed for a smaller and simpler company.” Other strategic methods used by Kmart’s competitors were differentiation and cost focus. Differentiation targets a wide mass market and entails innovation of products and services that is perceived all through its industry as unique. The cost focus strategy is a inexpensive yet effective competitive strategy that targets a group or a geographic market and attempts to erve only that...