Strategic Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 3

Strategic Management - Essay Example It is the process through which organizations follow a certain path to achieve desired short term and long term goals and can maintain a desired level of output. A proper strategic planning can help an organization to develop a clear long term vision and would help the management to visualize where the organization would be after five to ten years or may be even more than that. Strategic Planning can be treated as a milestone for each and every organization. Without strategic planning, the organization can actually never identify the present position in the industry and cannot develop a strategic guidance for the future (Henry, 2008, p. 89). This study has been conducted with a motive to develop a strategic plan for Tesco, one of the large retail supermarkets in the U.K. The study looks to focus all the aspects related to the development of a strategic plan of an organization including the assessment of the mission and vision statement, situation analysis and final development of the strategy to gain competitive advantage over the competitors. Here it needs to be mentioned that the although Tesco is a global retailer, but still the study has been conducted with respect to the UK market as it happens to be the home country and largest market of Tesco compared to other markets in the world. Getting Ready Choosing Organization Tesco PLC. Developing Organizational Profile Tesco PLC is a multinational retail grocery retailer and general merchandiser. The company is headquartered in Chest Hunt, UK. It happens to be the largest retailer in the United Kingdom and the third largest retailer in the world after Wal-Mart and Carrefour. The company was originally founded by Jack Cohen in 1919. As on April 2012, Tesco had 6,351 stores all over the world. The company has 2,975 stores in UK market. According to annual financial report of 2012 the total revenue of the company is ?64.539 billion. Specific issues to be addressed Over the past few years the retail business in the UK has seen a lot of changes. One of the key issues to look for while developing the strategic plan would be the effect of the changes external environmental factors and the impact of those on the company’s day to day business activity. The present industry scenario also plays a major role in the development of the business strategy and hence this has to be taken into account. Along with the external environment assessment, the internal environmental factors would also be reviewed as it would help the company to identify the core competencies, strengths as well as the weaknesses (Kolb, 2008, p. 92). Key Information to be collected To understand the impact of the external environmental changes, political, economic, social and technological factors need to be assessed. Also to understand the present market scenario especially market competitiveness, Porters Five Forces will be analysed. It consists of bargaining power of the buyers and suppliers, industry