Organisational and leadership management Case Study - 1

Organisational and leadership management - Case Study Example Their major aim is to highlight themselves in the middle and lower strata of the population to gain maximum market penetration and market share. Going into the history of the organization, it was founded in 1965 in West Yorkshire England, and it is there only that their headquarters are present. The major products that they are offering their vast customer base are grocery, general merchandize and financial services; a domain that is different from their focal business. Associated Dairies and Farms Stores Limited was formed in 1949; the company ASDA was formed after a merger agreement with three supermarket chains in 1965. After a lot of changes in the product base, coupled with mergers, acquisitions and diversifications, they started their focused approach towards extending their food retailers vision forward. This was done in 1989, by buying huge stores of Rivals, Gateway Superstores for a whopping some of 750 million pounds. Problem of selling too many products arose, which are encountered by raising capital from shareholders twice. The journey of then coupling themselves with the American giant Wal-Mart started where the CEO of the company even sent people to the organization in order to access the marketing and technology base that their international rivals were using. The takeover of this British organization by the US giant Wal-Mart, took place on 26th July, 1999; this was when the organization was planning to take over Kingfisher plc. (ASD A, 2009) The organization is basically boasting to provide product and service both to its values customers. It is more of less in the middle of the product-service continuum, sliding more towards to product end. This is because the organization has built a brand name in providing quality service in terms of retail housing to its customers. This requires high quality of product. On the other hand, due to their sound brand name, they have this aspect of after sales service that is being associated with the organization, the customers are satisfied that their queries would be met with. The element we will be focusing on in the assignment is the product orientation of the organization. It is a publically owned organization where shares are being traded on different stock exchanges. The company boasts of an income of 638 million pounds and is currently employing over 143 thousand in its organization, serving the whole of the United Kingdom. They have been known for their marketing campaigns based of fair/low price products that have kept the competition alive in the retailer market. ANALYSIS OF THE ORGANIZATION The organization provides retail to its customers. Apart from the basic grocery products and retail chains that it is providing its customers, the company has also diversified and moved into the financial sector market. They also provide financial services to the customers with the help of the subsidiary organizations. However, the focus of the analysis is the retailer section of the organization's product line. There are several factors for choosing the General Merchandize and grocery sector, in short the retailer business, of the company. One of the most prominent and important one is that this sector has been developed over a large period of time. The