“It’s a very competitive world.” as Mr. Joyce, the co-founder of Tim Hortons, had said. Meanwhile, Marc Caira, the new chief executive officer of the coffee and doughnut chain (The Globe and Mail, 2013), has had a vision of improving internal strengths to defend itself from the expansion of external forces. Although Tim Hortons already is the best of speed services in Canada, Mr Caira still believes that they can do better.

We can derive a brief analysis of Tim Hortons in Mr. Caira’s viewpoint from the news. For its strengths, they have good coffees, fast services, and great varieties of patisseries. However, these strengths have gradually turned into weaknesses due to growing competitions. Fast services has to be even faster and accurate in order to be outstanding in the market. Also, good coffees are not “good” enough to stay competitive – more innovation should be added to it as well as introducing more new offerings to attract customers. With respect to the great varieties of products, cutting some to make it simpler might be a good choice to help the supply chain to flow more smoothly as the service speeds up.

Being conservative in a global market these days is dangerous since the competition platform is growing, so as the number of competitors. Thus, sometimes taking a few risks might be a good move – especially moves to empower oneself!

Reference:

Strauss, Marina. “Tim Hortons Vows Faster Service to Fend off Rivals.” The Globe and Mail. N.p., 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 30 Sept. 2013.

As we all know, Abercrombie & Fitch is famous for its delicate clothing designs, its popularity, and of course – hot and sexy models! However, recently there have been reports showing that some A&F shoppers attempt to raise public awareness towards their discontent concerning the SIZES of A&F products!

More than 70,000 people have signed many petitions to urge A&F to offer XL and XXL sizes, the reason is that they feel as if being excluded from the societal trend where wearing A&F products is stylish!

“We recently conducted a global research study on what our consumers think, and the data may lead us to make further changes throughout the business,” a company spokesperson said in response to this issue.

Using the SWOT to analyse the harm that this issue has brought to A&F, there are indeed certain facets that the company has to face and consider. The gimmick of its branding and products is to show ‘skinny’ and ‘hot’ body shapes, but its weakness is that it loses MANY potential customers who are the plus-size shoppers. However, the problem with expanding the market is to raise expense (labour, resources) as well as the cost, which brings many other problems into consideration.

Link:

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/2013/08/07/customer-protests/9.html

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