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Uk Supermarkets

Introduction
This report considers the UK Grocery Retailing Industry (hereafter often mentioned as just “the industry”) and is based on the case study attached to the report.
It consists of two parts.
The first and the main part seeks to analyse in the light of the environment it operates in. The key industry and market characteristics are identified and, inter alia, PEST and Five Forces frameworks are employed to identify and analyse the key factors affecting the industry from the macro-environment and estimate the pr4sent and the future profit potential of the industry. Finally a summary of the key factors and trends is given alongside with recommendation on entry to the industry by acquiring a medium sized competitor (such as Morrisons).
In the second part of the report the generic strategies of Tesco, Asda and Waitrose are compared to one another and differentiation within the industry is discussed.

Industry Analysis
Industry and Market Characteristics
The UK grocery retailing industry is one of the most established industries in UK, which produced sales and profit growth for a great number of years. It could be said to include all UK based companies that are involved in retail sales and distribution of groceries, i.e. food, drinks, cleaning products, toiletries and other small household goods. Although the industry is involved in selling of a whole variety of different products it mainly sells food and therefore could be considered a part or a sub-industry of much larger food industry. Food industry is a major sector of UK economy and comprises farmers, manufacturers, processors, wholesalers and caterers as well as retailers.
UK grocery retailing industry has been experiencing growth over the last few years. And although all main members enjoyed the growth, larger stores managed to grow much faster and outperform small stores and specialist food stores (see Table 1).
This growth appears to be mainly attributable to the growth in the retail food...