Amazon & Woolworths Online Tutoring

Introduction

Woolworths is an Australian supermarket chain operated through supermarkets and grocery stores. The company is owned by Woolworths group and is founded in 1924 (Arli et al., 2013). The company along with another supermarket giant of Australia Coles claims almost 80% of supermarket share of Australian retail industry (Luiz, 2019). Main products of Woolworths include grocery items such as fruits, vegetable, meat, packaged food etcetera (Haskins et al., 2020). However, the company also sell products such as DVDs , magazines, health and beauty products, products of households, stationary items and baby and pet supplies. According to the estimates there are 981 Woolworth supermarkets and 43 Woolworth metro convenience stores (Knox, 2015). Total revenue of the company has reached to Australian dollar 60.568 billion, the company is responsible to employee 225,000 employees (Woolworths, 2020). Headquarter of the company is located at Bella Vista, New South Wales, Australia.

 

Background of the Report

Woolworths and Coles together claims 80% of market share of Australian retail industry (Keith, 2012), but with the entrance of Amazon in the market the company has really started facing challenges in the form of competition given by Amazon in Australia. The business of Woolworths is challenged by Amazon as soon as Amazon has entered into Australian retail industry and has started offering prices which are far lower than prices offered by other supermarket players of Australia including Woolworths (Mitchell, 2019).

On the detailed audit it is found out that there are some genuine flaws in business operations of Woolworths and these flaws are also responsible for declining market share of Woolworths. There is no doubt that Amazon is one of the most dominating digital business giant of the world yet other organizations with their effective polices give tough competition to Amazon. In this instance, the internal issues with solutions for Woolworths are presented below.

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Major Issues faced by Woolworths

Woolworths is not a new business organization in Australia, it is operating since 1924 and have established itself in the continent with its effective polices and quality of product and services (Woolworths, 2020). Although the company was facing tough competition from other supermarket giants such as Coles etcetera yet it has successfully maintained its position for year but with the entrance of Amazon in the market the company is compelled to reconsider its weaknesses so that by overcoming these weaknesses Woolworths will sustain itself in the retail market of Australia (Issabelle, 2020). On detailed audit, the major issues which are found out as the weak areas of Woolworths is lack of corporate trained staff and social media ineptitude.

1.    Lack of Trained Online Staff

 Presently it is estimated that a major chunk of customers shop through online applications of retail superstores such as by shopping through company’s website or mobile phone application or calling directly to the company customer representatives (Morales-Solana et al., 2018). However, online shopping system of Woolworths is very poor, according to the survey nearly 3000 of the respondents were not satisfied with the company’s online customer representative services (as shown in figure 1 below) (Issabelle, 2020). Customer complaint that customer representatives of Woolworths fail to provide necessary engagement with the customers when called for online purchase. Additionally, they also fail to answer queries of customers which they have asked while making purchase decisions. From this scenario it is concluded that staff designated for online sales by Woolworths is inefficient and nonproductive however the staff of Amazon is one of the most efficient and highly productive staff of business community (Adaji & Vassileva, 2017, April). Woolworth’s lack of trained online staff is one of the biggest reason that Woolworths will stumble while racing against the leader of digital marketing and sales i.e. Amazon. So, first issue identified which is one of the potential cause of Woolworths decline, is lack of trained and productive online marketing and sales staff including the customer services department (Issabelle, 2020).

 

2.    Social Media Ineptitude

Further, the second issue which is identified for Woolworths as the major flaw, is its social media ineptitude. According to Biyela (2018), supermarket giants such as Amazon, Tesco, Aldi etcetera maintains their social media effectiveness with much serious attitude as compared to Woolworths. Social media has become one of the most effective platforms for customer interaction in fact it is perfectly fine to say that social media has become more important as compare to company’s official website because at social media customers can interact with each other and leave feedback against service which they have experienced online (Astuti, 2019). Those organizations who do not maintain their social media presence find it difficult to maintain loyal customer base with high satisfaction rate (Govender, 2017). Amazon has one of the most attractive and effective social media presence. Amazon not only maintains its social media presence but it also undertakes marketing through social media. In fact, Amazon’s complete supply chain is based on the social media as its backbone. For example, through social media marketing, customers see the products which are offered by Amazon. Another key feature of Amazon’s social presence include the dumping of website links through which customers directly reach at Amazon’s official website where customer make their purchases (Moore & Tambini, Eds. 2018). The social media engagement strategy of Amazon is based on its own Instagram/Pinterest application named as Spark (see figure 2 below). Through this application, customers engage with Amazon team while leading directly to product purchases. After selecting their topics of interest, the customers receive notifications and product category sales on chosen topic. Friendly and secure customer’s payment system of Amazon also makes is dominant in digital online shopping market. Hence, if Woolworths wants to give tough competition to Amazon and really desires to maintain its position in Australian supermarket industry then it has to offer same facilities to the customers which are offered by its competitors such as Amazon.

 

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Strategies for Woolworths to Overcome Issues

The solutions and strategies which are offered in order to overcome the issues mentioned above are provision of effective online trainings to online staff members and improving social media channels of the company. Both of these strategies are discussed in detail below.

1.0   Trainings for Online Staff Members

In present business environment, consumer behavior and shopping trends have drastically been changed, according to latest shopping trends customers prefer to buy products online and get products at their door step instead of visiting to the market to make purchase (Behringer & Sassenberg, 2015). In this context, Woolworths have to make necessary arrangements to provide effective and accurate trainings to its online staff members. For example, according to latest estimates 3000 customers have made complain about ineffective online or customer representative service at Woolworths, now if the company had effective online staff then these dissatisfied customers would have made purchase from the company’s online customer services (Chaichi, 2012). So, it is mandatory for Woolworths to provide appropriate trainings regarding e-commerce and online business transaction. Online sales trainings are the most important in this regard which will train online staff of Woolworths so that necessary services can be provided to customers. Handling customers’ queries appropriately is possible after training the employees on mastering knowledge about the company. Moreover, it is imperative for the employees to know the most asked queries so that automated answers can be sent as a quick response (Helberger et al., 2010).

Steps for Training of Employees

• The first step towards arranging trainings for online staff is findings suitable courses including customer services, retail technology, managing customers through technology and understanding the customers. Courses regarding customer services ethics and quality response management will also be searched for.
• Second step in this context will be selection of employees who requires training. First priority will be given to employees who are designated for online sales and customer representation.
• Third step in this context is payment of training course fees from the company’s account.
• Fourth step will be conducting of training session for instance deciding date and time for training
• Last step in this context is evaluation of training program through observing rise in online sales, improved online customer’s feedback and overall rise in organizational productivity.

Role and Responsibility

Entire responsibility for selection and providing training to the employees falls under the responsibilities of Human resource manager, because training and development is a function that is performed by human resource department of an organization. Finance Manager will be involved in provision of training because he will release the payment for training and development session of online sales staff.

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