What are the chief elements of the strategy that Whole Foods Market is pursuing')

Wtioe Foods Market was founded in 1983 as a idCai supermarket and has now become world's largest retail chain of natural and organic foods supermarkets. Whole Foods offers the highest quality, least processed. most flavorful and naturally preserved foods available. Whole foods market has its own private label brands of organics. Whole Foods Market aims to sell the highest quality natural and organic products. satisfy and delight its customers and team members, create wealth through profits and growth and care about communities and environment. Growth Strategy: Till 2002 their growth strategy was to expand via a combination of opening its new stores and acquiring small stores that were located in desirable locations. From 2002 the management decided to drive growth by opening 10 to 15 bigger stores in metropolitan areas. It bought their biggest rival wild oats and expanded their product offerings and reduced their prices which improved the sales immensely n three months. Store Sizes & Locations Strategy: Whole Food's store sizes range between 40.000 square feet to 60.000 initially. They increased the store sizes and now their biggest store is of size 99.800 square feet located in London. Other store sizes are 71.000 sq feel. 77.000 sq feel. 65.000 sq feet. 55.000 sq feet etc. Their location strategy was to open stores in upscale areas of metropolitan centers. Their most stores were located in high traffic shopping locations, some were freestanding. some were in strip centers and some in high density mixed use projects. They have their own model to analyze markets. Store Layout & Merchandising Strategy: Whole Foods Market did not have a standard layoutfor stores. Each store's layout is designed according to the particular site and building configuration. Their merchandising strategy was to create an inviting and interactive store atmosphere. They use bright colors for product displays. provide best quality of foods and customer service and maintain cleanliness everywhere. Store Operations: Whole Foods follows a team approach to store operations. It employs between 85 and GOO team members organized into minimum 13 teams. Each team is led by a leader. Whole Foods has Oven its team members full authority to make many decisions at the store level regarding merchandising, departmental operations and customer service. The team approach promotes strong corporate culture and motivation among employees. Product Line:

The products and brands offered vary from store to store because stores are of different sizes and have different clientele. Whole Foods have around 30,000 natural. organic and gourmet food products. The prices at Whole Foods are higher than conventional supermarkets. However as it manages to provide customers the premium quality they are willing to pay higher price for it. Marketing & Customer Service: 0.5 percent of its revenue is assigned for advertising. They prefer primarily on word-of-mouth recommendations. Each of its stores has a separate budget for marketing of particular store through fairs. classes, product sampling etc. The corporate marketing budget is allocated to region wide marketing efforts. Whole Foods has empowered its team members to do whatever they want to please the customers. Compensation & Incentives: The company has a gain sharing program which is based on the profits of each store. It also encourages stock ownership. Its salary limits the compensation of any team member to 19 times the average total compensation of all full-time team members in the company. It uses Economic Value Added to measure performance. Purchasing & Distribution: Most of the purchasing of Whole Foods is from local regional and national wholesale suppliers and vendors. It owns two produce procurement centers that facilitated the procurement and distribution of in aprity of its products. It operates nine regional distribution centers, nine regional bake houses and live commissary kitchens.