The research aims at investigating effective developmental strategies to decrease cost, avoid vicious competition and increase enterprises’ economic benefits through enhancing the enterprises’ managing level and their operation efficiency so that the enterprises develop healthily and stably. Hence, this study has practical significance.

1.3 Research Questions

To fulfill the above research objectives, following questions are focused on:

1) What are the internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats of Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket? 2) In what way does Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket construct its competitive advantages?

1.4 Research Method

Some related literature from both home and abroad reveal the research trend and find out the breakthrough point for the present study.

Investigation and questionnaires can provide the first hand information by making an overall plan. In this paper, I make a questionnaire to get survey data, thus providing a basis for further study. The questionnaire includes two main parts. The first part is about interviewees’ basic information and consumption habits. The second part adopts the form of five scales (totally satisfied, satisfied, average, unsatisfied, totally unsatisfied). 300 participants are involved in the questionnaire and 280 of them are valid. 

Quantitative analysis research method helps make detailed analysis and come up with the suitable development strategy,making the strategic decision more scientific.

1.5 Thesis Layout

This paper is pided into five chapters.

Chapter One is an introduction. It gives a general description of the research, which includes the research questions and the goal of the research. Then it tells the significance and the overall structure of the paper.

Chapter Two is about literature review. Firstly, It establishes the related research at home and broad, which lays the foundations for this analysis. Secondly, it gives an explanation of SWOT and its development.

Chapter Three is SWOT analysis of Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket. It includes the internal analysis of strength and weakness and external opportunities and threats of Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket. This chapter gives a detailed description of the methodology and the ways by which I conduct the study.

Chapter Four is results and discussion. By using SWOT analysis model, I put forward the preliminary construction in theoretical framework of development strategy and give a detailed description of how to implement it.

Chapter Five is the conclusion, which includes the major findings, implications and limitation as well as recommendations for future research.

1.6 Innovations

This study conducts a comprehensive study and discussion on the development strategy combination and selection of the Xuzhou Lotus Supermarket. Based on SWOT strategic analysis, this study comes up with strategic choices and implementation, constructing a practical operation and effective strategic framework, and combined with specific case studies which provides evidence that indicates strong operability and practical value for the strategic framework.

 Chapter Two  Literature Review

2.1 Related Research Abroad

The development of supermarkets can be pided into the following stages. In the early stages of development, supermarkets were only engaged in food, so it could only meet the needs of food. In order to buy merchandise goods, people must go to other stores, which brought great inconvenience to consumers. To satisfy the customers’ one-stop purchase requirements, the scale of supermarkets and categaries of goods have continued to expand. Simultaneously, non food items and service projects were introduced into supermarkets, thus modern supermarkets have evolved to life plaza. People in large supermarkets can enjoy products in various aspects. It merges shopping, leisure, entertainment, ect. into an integral whole.