Steps of Retail Strategy Planning (Retail Strategy 08.06.2021)

Steps of Retail Strategy Planning

Strategic planning is a formal process. Thus, it is marked by specific activities in which firms engage to build a marketing plan, ensuring that the entire organization is aligned on strategic priorities.

 

The actions included in strategic planning are:

1. Objective Setting

2. Situational Analysis

3. Customer Analysis

4. Tactical Planning

5. Implementation and Control

 

1. Objective Setting

A firm might pursue any number of objectives for any number of reasons. For example, an objective around sales could be expressed by total revenue, total units, or YOY (year over year) growth.

 

The stated objective might be made with an eye ultimately on profitability or market share or operational efficiency. Objective setting is not just stating a goal, ambition or target. It isn’t only about WHAT the firm plans to accomplish, such as “grow category sales by 4%”.

 

It must also include the plan for HOW the firm can accomplish that goal, which implies WHY the objective is strategically important.

 

2. Situational Analysis

Situational analysis helps decision-makers in the firm understand what to do and how to do it. At its most basic level, it’s a multi-dimensional consideration of the context (the environment in which we’ll compete), organizational capabilities, customer, and competition. These factors describe the business environment, how our own abilities can deliver value relative to consumer needs, and the likely actions/reactions of our competitive set.

 

3. Customer Analysis

Customer analysis is a critical activity that ultimately helps focus marketing and sales resources more efficiently. It includes research into and analysis of consumer behaviour, the results of which inform segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Thus, rather than marketing a product or actively trying to sell it across a wide swath of the total population, customer analysis helps break the population into smaller homogenous segments. From these, marketers select the sub-population of potential customers who are the most attractive and most accessible for targeting.

 

4. Tactical Planning

Tactical plans are the short-term actions the firm takes to affect the controllable elements of the strategy. For example, if a firm has the objective to “grow category sales by 4% by increasing merchandising and promotional activity,” a relevant tactic might be to plan robust promotional activity in key seasons.

 

5. Implementation and Control

Implementation and control refer to how the firm puts its strategic plan into place, including how it organizes cross-functionally and communicates priorities. Further, it also includes how the firm tracks progress toward its objectives, measuring performance so that adjustments can be made, if necessary. Certainly, a firm is responsible for managing its controllable variables. But robust monitoring and control systems help firms react and adjust to uncontrollable variable like changes to the business environment or specific competitive activity.