7-Eleven Retail Store - Report Example

7-Eleven is a retail store that is well known for its low costs as well as the generic strategy of management. The retail store has a variety of approaches that are mainly focused on its supply chain and integration to serve the market as well as survive the stiff competition from other top retailers like Amazon. The success of 7-Eleven will depend on the survival strategy that is prioritizing on decisions and operations management mainly through technology in carrying out the business (Barratt, 2011). As a retail store, the firm cuts its production cost. Thus, these products are cheap regarding their prices hence affordable to everyone. Besides having a different line of goods like groceries and general merchandise, it started as a retail store for bread, milk, and eggs. Additionally, the firm efficiently minimizes the cost of production through designing goods that are easy to manufacture in bulk to serve a wider market (Qingyi et al., 2017).

As an online retail store, 7-Eleven is using technology in its services to the bigger economy in all possible way in its strategy of driving efficiency within and outside the organization. Being a top retail store, 7-Eleven serves the market through different stores like the warehouses, supercenters as well as grocery stores in various regions of the globe. As the element of technology is concerned, the success of 7-Eleven stores has embraced the use of technology in logistics as heavily as stated by the CEO John Philip Thompson in a meeting last week.

Technology helps in controlling the stores and developing other e-commerce technologies to run the sites as well as direct the logistics in the supply chain. In using technology (Kistruck et al., 2015), 7-Eleven has ensured to get people that have talents and capabilities that will bring development in the company's production through the introduction of a digital menu. Additionally, as an eCommerce store, it has a website that acts as an accelerator that makes the online sites to operator faster and efficiently for the company to serve the needs of the market on time. More so, 7-Eleven also uses these sites in evaluating the different views and reactions of the people to improve on the areas that have most complaints (Huizingh, 2002). The supply chain of 7-Eleven highly depends on information technology in that information systems links directly to the company's ability to operate under low-cost operations approach. Additionally, the systems guide the managers, suppliers, and vendors in making collaborative decisions in merchandising across all the chains to meet the market demand.

Recommendations

The fact that online retail is positively impacting on businesses, it implies that the online competition will become more stiff and robust. Technology keeps changing in the sense that people can have access to any product or service they want just by using their smartphones. It is evident in this case that 7-Eleven must not only embrace technology as a selling and buying platform but as a social interaction. It should create other sites under which customers can also view the comments and suggestions from fellow buyers. Additionally, 7-Eleven should use online platforms to involve people in the manufacturing of their products to see how the products come to the market and the efforts enacted before their consummation. It can be through the use of free videos showing how the company manufactures its products. Through these, the customers will invest more in acquiring the commodities having seen all the struggles to satisfy their needs.

References

Barratt, M., Choi, T. Y., & Li, M. (2011). Qualitative case studies in operations management: Trends, research outcomes, and future research implications. Journal of Operations Management, 29(4), 329-342.

Huizingh, E. K. (2002). Towards successful e-business strategies: a hierarchy of three management models. Journal of Marketing Management, 18(7-8), 721-747.

Kistruck, G. M., Morris, S. S., Webb, J. W., & Stevens, C. E. (2015).The importance of client heterogeneity in predicting make-or-buy decisions. Journal of Operations Management, 33, 97-110.

Qingyi Huang, Vincent R. Nijs, Karsten Hansen, Eric T. Anderson (2012) 7-Eleven Impact on Supplier Profits. Journal of Marketing Research: April 2012, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 131-143