Buy essay on Costco

Costco is one of the largest retailers in the US and the world. The company operates internationally and has already reached a tremendous success in its operations. At the same time, the commercial success of Costco is the result of the successful implementation of marketing strategy developed by the company. On the other hand, the successful implementation of the marketing strategy would be impossible without the strategy formulation developed by Costco, which is strategically important for the company’s development. At the present moment the company has quite effective strategy formulation process but it is still imperfect and can be improved to maximize the effectiveness of the organizational performance.
First of all, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that Costco operates internationally and, therefore, the company needs an effective strategy formulation that meets its current needs, regardless of the location of its stores. In this respect, it should be said that the company has proved to be quite successful in the development of the strategy formulation at the international level. In actuality, Costco’s strategy formulation passes through three key stages: strategic analysis, assessment of the situation and setting objectives, and development of a strategic plan on the ground of objectives set.
In actuality, the company conducts a detailed situational and competitive analysis to assess adequately its current position, needs and to set strategic goals and objectives. At the same time, the situational analysis raises a number of problems the company sometimes fails to overcome because the company fails to develop strategy formulation that is flexible enough. What is meant here is the fact that the strategy formulation and situation analysis occurs at the international level, regardless of peculiarities of marketing and competitive situation at the local level. As a result, the company conducts situational analysis taking into consideration the situation in the global market, which though does not mirror peculiarities of the situation at the regional level, while the situation at this level may differ from international one.
On the ground of the situation and competitive analysis, Costco conducts the assessment of its current competitive position and sets strategic objectives the company has to achieve. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that the company basically focuses on short-run and long-run objectives and pays little attention to mid-term objectives. Nevertheless, in the context of strategic planning mid-term objectives are not as crucial as long-run ones.
On setting objectives, Costco develops a strategic plan. However, the development of strategic plan occurs at the top executive level with little involvement of managers taking the lower position in the organizational hierarchy. Obviously, this is a significant drawback of the strategy formulation of Costco because the company fails to develop the strategic plan that meets expectations of the personnel and which is effective enough. The latter is possible only if Costco involves its personnel in the development of its strategic plan.
Therefore, the strategy formulation in Costco is quite effective but it is imperfect. The larger number of managers should be involved in the process of strategic planning. In such a way, this will help Costco to conduct more effective situational and competitive analysis on the ground of which the company can set more accurate objectives and develop more effective strategic plan. On following these recommendations Costco can improve its strategy formulation.