Seven Eleven Market Analysis

7-Eleven, Inc.

3. Appendix

3.1 Company description and background

Instead of its current convenient store business, the South Land Ice Company, founded in Dallas, Texas back in 1927, was start by selling blocks of ice to refrigerate food. Later, one of its directors wanted to expand its services by selling milk, eggs and bread through his retail ice docks, then introduced a new name for the retail stores "Tote'm Stores". At first the company operated on Sunday evenings when most of grocery stores were closed. In 1946, the company changed its name to "7-eleven" to reflect the change in operating hours, from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. Currently, however, most 7-eleven stores operate twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.

Today most of the Dallas based company stocks are owned by Japanese company, IYG Holding Company. The company operates, franchises, and licenses 6,850 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Internationally, the company licenses and affiliates operate 28,900 stores in 13 countries including Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Philippines, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

3.1.1 Mission statement and objectives

The company considers itself as a good neighbor that serves the changing needs of the communities in which the stores operate. To be a welcome and respected neighbor, the company enhances the quality of communities by providing broad selections of fresh and quality products twenty-four hours a day, ensuring that the company will meet customer needs whenever they want. In addition to meeting the convenience needs of the communities, the company also enhances the overall quality of life in neighborhoods by focusing on four areas including safety, education, health & wellness, and community revitalization. To achieve this, the company provides variety of programs such as a corporate giving program: donate cash or products to the local police, school, and community events, coupon program: reward the positive behavior of children by providing free slurpee coupon. Moreover, on the national level, the company funds many charities and donates a portion of its profits to the USO, the American Red Cross, breast cancer awareness organizations, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

3.1.2 Core competencies

The company's core competencies reflect its mission statement and objective and to serve the community's changing needs.

Its core competencies lie on the information system. The company uses the retail information system (RIS), which provides store manager with historical sales data. The data provides valuable information including sales trends that help to address which items are slow-sales items. With that information, store operators can get rid those items and replace them with new ones. Moreover, store operators can use this information to maximize the sales and prevent the run-out-of-stock situation of that particular item. Ultimately, stores operators can observe when the busiest hours for a particular item are and arrange an appropriate shipping time to ensure that customers will get fresh and quality items every time they come to the stores.

This technology offers two benefits to the company. First, it offers flexibility to replace the slow-sales items with the new items. This represents the company's effort to serve the changing needs of customers. Second, the technology offers the ability to serve fresh and quality items and the right place and the right time. The item-by-item management reduces the opportunity costs of slow-sales items and the stock inventories.

3.2 Situation Analysis (SWOT)

Strengths

• An international convenience store and the largest chain store with more than 35,000 stores around the world located in over eighteen countries. 7-Eleven, Inc. and its franchisees operated 6,840 stores in the United States and Canada, and also with the global 7-Eleven store count reaching 28,900 stores worldwide.

• Localized assortment to familiarize the preference of communities.

• Offers fresh, high quality food

• 24 hour convenience outlets with strong brand name.

• Computerized information system (RIS)

Weaknesses

• Limited variety of assortment.

• Limited outlet space thus causing