3.2 Internal Analysis 11

3.2.1 Strengths 11

3.2.2 Weaknesses 15

3.3 External Analysis 17

3.3.1 Opportunities 17

3.3.2 Threats 20

Chapter Four  Results and Discussion 24

4.1 Strength--Opportunity (SO) Strategy 24

4.2 Weakness--Opportunity (WO) Strategy 25

4.3 Strength--Threat (ST) Strategy 26

4.4 Weakness--Threat (WT) Strategy 26

Chapter Five  Conclusion 28

5.1 Major Findings and Suggestions 28

5.2Implications 30

5.3 Limitation. 30

5.4 Recommendations for Future Research. 30

References 32

Appendix 33 

A Study of the Development Strategies of Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket Based on SWOT Analysis

Chapter One  Introduction

Lotus Supermarket is the the biggest retail enterprise of Charoen Pokphand Group. It is established to bring advanced concept of retail store and improve people’s life quality eventually. The operation target of Lotus supermarket is to provide customers with the biggest benefit and good quality goods with low price.

Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited (CPF) is a food manufacturing company in Thailand. It is engaged in animal feed production, breeding animals, farming animals for commercial purposes, meat processing and manufacturing processed food products. The company operates in two main business lines namely the livestock business and the aquaculture business. The livestock business consists of chicken, duck and swine. It offers livestock feed for broilers, layers, swine and duck, parent stock swine, broiler chicks, layer chicks, baby hogs and ducklings. 

In 1979, the group opened the first retail store in China after the reform and opening-up policy. In the following twenty-seven years, the group set up two hundred and thirteen branches, becoming the leading enterprise of feed industry in China.

1.1 Research Background 

In 2004, Chinese government lifted restrictions in region, equity and quantity in order to attract more foreign enterprises to invest in the country through an all-round opening-up policy. Since then, supermarkets have moved towards the era of comprehensive competition. As China’s per capita GDP increases, she has the most potential retail market in Asia. Such a huge market surely attracts an increasing number of multinational retail groups that have their own advantages in scales, technology, brand, and capital. Their rapid expansion brings great attack and pressure to native retail enterprises. Worse still, with the rapid development of information and technology, shopping online has become an irreversible trend nowadays. For example, people prefer shopping on Taobao and Jingdong, which means they can get whatever they want without going outside. Recently, RT-Mart and Wanda Plaza have built their retail stores nearby. Confronted with such fierce competition, Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket has to carry out strategies to seek a path for survival.

1.2 Research Objective and Significance

On the basis of SWOT analysis, this paper explores the developmental strategies of Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket, emphasizing its internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats, presents how to build competitive advantages and then formulates the effective development measures, that is strength--opportunity strategy, weakness--opportunity strategy, strength--threat strategy and weaknesses--threat strategy, which help Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket make further development plans.