This 11 page paper examines K-Mart in the 1990’s at a time when there are declining sales and attempts to compete are weak. K-Mart is competing against Wal-Mart and is struggling to find a competitive advantage. The paper examines K-Mart with a Porters Five Forces, a SWOT analysis, looking at the lack of competitive advantage and the financial position before suggesting an approach to develop a viable long term strategy. The bibliography cites 6 sources.
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However the difficulty is that these customers appear to only shop at the store infrequently and there is no loyalty. The image of the store as a bargain basement shop
does not help this issue when the target market is middle income families. The companys main competitor is Wal-Mart which has the cost advantage leaving K-mart with the need
to develop a competitive advantage. The difficulties in realising this aim is seen in the cyclical losses in 1993 and 1996 accounts. Looking a the company they have made changes
and adapted but have falsetto find a way to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. PORTERS FIVE FORCES 3 2.1 Exiting Competition 3
2.2 New Entrants 4 2.3 Power of Buyers 5 2.4 Power of Suppliers 6 2.5 Substitutes 6 3. SWOT 6 3.1 Strengths 6 3.2 Weaknesses 6 3.3 Opportunities 7 3.4 Threats 8 4. FINANCIAL POSITION 8 5. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 9 5.1 Sustainability 10 6. ISSUES 11 7. MARKETING 11 1. Introduction
K-Mart is a well known brand and the case study provided by the students shows a case where there was a broad strategy, but
one that was only reactive and did not seek to develop specific competitive advantages. K-mart starts it as a discount store where it is competing on price and with the
centralization of purchasing and inventory control we may argue there is the strategy of gaining economies of scale. The market matured over time and even in mature market there appears
to be the continued pursuance of the same polices, seeing prices as the main issue when there are drops in sales. There were changes, but these appeared to react and
follow others and fail to innovate. To consider the situation of K-mart we can use Porters Five Forces Model. 2. Porters Five Forces 2.1 Exiting Competition The first problem that faced
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