Fairprice - Largest Grocery Retailer & Online Shopping Portal In Singapore Offers Convenient Essay.

Profile/background or history

Profile/background or history:

Fairprice is one of the largest grocery retailer and online shopping portal under NTUC FairPrice Co-operative Ltd. in Singapore. Its target is to provide effortless online shopping experience to its customers from browse to purchase what customers are looking for. Recently Fairprice has launched their own mobile app to provide customers wide selection of products and latest updates about their promotions. Fairprice aims to achieve a seamless shopping journey for their customers through constant upgradation in their mobile app and website facilities. With the concept of Click and Collect service Fairprice allows customers to shop online and collect the products from their nearest shop.

Its market position relative to the other major supermarket chains:

As per SWOT Analysis Fairprice provides a very good distribution of networks all over the Singapore through more than 270 stores and it is the oldest legacy in the Singapore among all other supermarkets. Fairprice invests in CSR which creates a good will and trust among the customers. Its strength is, it’s easy online shopping and home delivery facilities, which makes Fairprice the largest grocery retailer in Singapore from few past years. It has a potential to become a global brand as Fairprice provides a very low cost product with high quality assurance. With the help of capital and sound technology Faiprice is making its position in m-commerce field also which is helping Fairprice to grow more against its copetitors like Giant Singapore, Sheng Siong, Cold Storage etc.

The target audience / market served:

Fairprice was founded by labor movement in 1973, to provide a moderate cost of living for the Singapore people. 80% people of Singapore prefers Fairprice as glossary supermarket because it is very convenience for customers to visit a Fairprice shop as customers can find various NTUC branches in almost every neighborhood. It is huge and provides good quality of foods i.e. fresh and organic foods. The NTUC Hypermart provides variety of products in different ranges from camping supplies to office supplies, the latest in electronics and sound systems to the freshest of cold cut meats and so many other things. NTUC has everything to offer to fulfill everyone’s demand.

Analysis of the present business status:

(a) “There is only one boss – the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Its market position relative to the other major supermarket chains

Name the famous entrepreneur is Sam Walton and he founded Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 1962.

A customer who can be a client, buyer or purchaser is a recipient of a product, idea or some services, obtained from a seller or supplier against money or any other valuable consideration. Statistically it signifies that when customers complain against the service or product, employees and managers gets excited about it including the business owner. The complaining customers are actually the huge opportunities for more and more business progress.

To capture the voice of a customer, company can create customer panels as it is not only a social media monitoring or online survey, through digital technologies company can capture valuable data and can create innovation and engaging experiences for their customers. Company should be more consumers centric to achieve customer satisfaction.

(b) Benchmarking is the tool to gain knowledge of competition against other competitor companies. An organization can follow different types of benchmarking, some are explained below.

INTERNAL BENCHMARKING- This is the process where the whole business process is compared with a similar business process inside the organization. It is relatively fast, easy and a cost efficient process.

COMPETITIVE BENCHMARKING- This is a direct comparison method of a product, service or process with its competitor. This helps an organization to gain knowledge about useful planning or setting goals or to know other competitors better for partnership.

FUNCTIONAL BENCHMARKING- This is the comparison done with same or identical particles within the similar industry.

GENERIC BENCHMARKING- It is conceptualized to understand unrelated business process that can participate in similar way regardless of the industry.

Voice of customer is the process of customer survey or review about the product, process or service through social communication media. In the other hand benchmarking is the process to understand the position of one organization in the market over its competitors.  

Question 3

(a) Rapid Knowledge Transfer Framework (RKT) allows organizations to be proactive in managing PFI projects. It mainly has three stages which help to create the action plans of one organization. This framework draws feedback on UK clients and consultants from different surveys. It also provides a detailed case concept on the basis of lessons and case studies provided by the industry partners. The benchmarking process in Singapore can be very helpful to British supermarket because through different benchmarking processes it has gained a details knowledge about the industry competitions, structure of their organizations, requirements of the customers and to fulfill all those requirements what are the improvements needed and to be executed. The Rapid Knowledge transfer frameworks objective is to understand the current level of participation of one organization and to improve the scope of the project. It also allows to access the existing knowledge transfer practices to support delivery of a project and also to increase the capabilities of the project. As per three stages of Rapid Knowledge Transfer Framework it needs to add templates in iterative manner where inputs of last module will be amended as a result in the identification of new issues. The output of this frame work is actually an Action Plan which is used to implement appropriate knowledge transfer solution of the project. The Action Plan delivers the required outcomes and identifies key activities / tasks, measures, timelines and the responsibilities. This process will be very helpful to the British supermarket as it has already helped the Singapore supermarket to expand their brands, products, services globally with good voice of customers and a quality benchmark.

The target audience / market served

(b) For supermarket business these two strategies need to be improved to get better globalization, these are as follows-

COST LEADERSHIP STRATEGY- Relative strength is the strategy which actually checks or compares the performances of the stock of products and mutual fund in all over the market. In supermarket business they provide different types of products at a very low cost with discounts, rebate, points, and promotions etc. which lead to low quality of products. Products quality should be increased on the mark of highest quality assurance for betterment.

EFFECTIVE SUPPLIER SELECTION- Supermarket business should focus on effective suppliers’ selection to construct a competitive supply relationship globally. This scheme helps to gain a better continue-supply relationship with the suppliers. Now a day’s competition has increased with huge demands of customers and a high cost demands of products which lead an organization to select a good supplier who can efficiently handle the continuous-supply relationship with the organization with increase of profit maintain the quality.

As per Deming’s 14 points for management, British supermarket should follow the below mentioned points to avoid quality issues-

Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of products and services with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs to others.

Adopt the new philosophy to improve the system, perform inspections to achieve a good quality and improve the systems structure continuously to achieve the quality and to maintain that benchmark of good quality.

1. The key areas in which benchmarking against a Singapore supermarket will be helpful to the British supermarket.

The Singapore supermarket benchmarking has gained a detailed knowledge about industry competitions, customers’ requirements, structural  details of their organization and how to achieve the goal through different benchmarking processes like Internal benchmarking, Competitive benchmarking, Generic bench marking, Functional benchmarking and other benchmarking processes. Singapore supermarket benchmarking can be very helpful or useful to the British supermarket in case of globalization of an existing project by improving its knowledge and capability about project structure and quality assurance.    

2. Twoareas in which the Singapore supermarket would need to improve quality.

As per Deming’s 14 points for management, Fairprice should adopt some strategy for improving the weak points. It is about the adaptation of some new philosophies for improving the quality of the products and services. In this context, the supermarket should utilize the below mentioned two strategies.

Cost Leadership Strategy- Relative strength is the strategy which actually checks or compares the performances of the stock of products and mutual fund in all over the market. In Singapore supermarkets they provide different types of products at a very low cost which actually lead to low quality of the products. In spite of assuring to provide a high quality of product they actually decrease the quality of a product and it is need to be improved for betterment.

Effective Supplier Selection- Singapore supermarket should be focused on effective suppliers’ selection to construct a competitive supply relationship globally. This scheme helps to gain a better continue-supply relationship with the suppliers. Now a day’s competition has increased with huge demands of customers and high cost products which lead an organization to select a good supplier who can efficiently handle the continuous-supply relationship with the organization with increase of profit maintain the quality.

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Fairprice.com.sg. 2017. About Us. [online] Available at: https://www.fairprice.com.sg/wps/portal/fp/aboutus [Accessed 2 May 2017].

Mothership.sg. 2017. Live cockroach found in packed braised duck sold at AMK Hub FairPrice, sale counter closed indefinitely | Mothership.SG. [online] Available at: https://mothership.sg/2017/03/live-cockroach-found-in-packed-braised-duck-sold-at-amk-hub-fairprice-sale-counter-closed-indefinitely/ [Accessed 2 May 2017].