Londis Like Shops In Areas example essay topic

Evaluate how Londis can and are responding to the threat of new supermarkets in the area. Londis stores, was set up in 1975 in Kens al Green. It is part of the many Londis chain stores up and down the country. It is a well respected and a well-known poplar shop as it was an easier and quicker alternative for the far away shopping centres and also because of its reasonable prices and friendliness. In the last few months though it has come under pressure because of the building of several supermarkets within a ten-mile radius. It is under pressure because people may think that instead of going to shop in Londis they can just take a five or ten minute journey to the local supermarket where there is more choice and possibly better quality goods.

I recently conducted a survey to try and find out whether people would rather shop in a small local shop like Londis or take a five to ten minute journey to the supermarket. The results were: 60% of people surveyed said they would rather take the five to ten minute journey to the supermarket. 30% said they would go to shop in Londis 10% said they would shop wherever they felt like at the time. This is bad news for Londis, because it means that the new superstores have the potential to take two-thirds of the Londis customers away. Londis have been trying to deal with this lately by adopting a number of short-term strategies they are: promotional offers e.g. two for the price of one. There were a couple of very popular ones which actually attracted some customers back they were: If you spend over fifteen pounds you get a free five pound record voucher for Virgin Mega stores.

And the last one was free delivery for pensioners and the disabled. These are all only short-term strategies and they can't afford to keep it up. Londis should start looking at long-term strategies because they haven't got the resources to keep funding these short-term plans. There are a number of long-term strategies they could adopt. The first step in developing a market strategy is to understand your customers, enabling reaction to their changing needs and the changing dynamics of the market.

One way of understanding customers is through market research; this is an essential way to coming up with the right strategy. Because Londis is situated in such a multicultural area they should try to widen there target audience by selling more multicultural foods e. g... Indian, European and West Indian etc, as at the moment they sell mainly British foods. I have recently conducted a survey to find out what percentage of shoppers drove.

The results were: 78% of shopper's drive, 15% get public transport and 7% walk. Unlike the big supermarkets, which have huge car parks, Londis have no parking spaces. This is bad because if the majority of shoppers drive then they are not going to want to inconvenience themselves by going to Londis were they won't be able to get a parking space, compared to if they go to the shopping centre were they will have no problem getting a parking space. Another worrying fact is that in the last five-years there has been a 20% increase in the closing down of Londis like shops in areas where there have been big supermarkets opened Londis could start a file on the supermarkets. They can keep manila envelopes of the supermarkets advertising and promotional materials and their pricing strategy techniques.

Then they review these files periodically, determining when and how often they advertise, and offer Sales. Studying the copy used in the advertising and promotional materials, and their sales strategy. For example is their copy short? Descriptive? Catchy? Or how much do they reduce prices for sales?

Using this technique can help them to understand their competitors better and how they operate. Londis could also devise a plan that uses advertising and networking as a means to promote their business. They could develop short, descriptive copy (text material) that clearly identifies their goods; it's location and price. Using catchy phrases to arouse the interest of their readers.

They could try and imply swot analysis to their planning; this involves the assessment of products of the shop in terms of strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses reflect the current position, while opportunities and threats may be important for the future. Swot analysis is good because it will help the business to move forward and make decisions about where it should be going and what strategy is right. CONCLUSION Londis can try to imply these strategies to try and compete with the big stores but in reality whatever they do they can't compete with the big stores who have more money and resources to block the threat of Londises strategies. In my view, instead of Londis trying to compete with the big companies who they have no chance against, they should try to still put these strategies in to action and try to take customers away from the other small companies in the area and keep themselves in business.