Dollar Tree Prospector

Improved Essays
Prospector organizations face the challenge of locating and capitalizing on the advantage of new innovative products and market opportunities (Heil, n.d.). In the beginning, when Dollar Tree was in its growth stage of the industry life cycle, they would have been classified as a prospector based on the Miles and Snow Strategy Framework. Per our text, a prospector strategizes to bring new products, designs, and innovation to their specific industry and practice product differentiation (Parnell, 2014). Prospectors are the ones that react quickest to any perceived changes in the market and are constantly looking for ways to develop new products and services. Parnell (2014) relays that prospectors often seek first-mover advantage; meaning that …show more content…
Also, evidenced by the changes that they quickly made to their marketing plan such as their quick shift away from carrying closeout merchandise to become more of a traditional variety store with a wide variety of basic goods. Another strategy that placed them in the prospector category was their shift away placing stores in traditional mall settings to opening stores in strip malls to draw the attention of customers that would normally shop in the larger anchor stores within the same strip setting. Miles and Snow’s theory was that organizations develop their strategies according to the discernment that they have of their current or impending environment (Parnell, 2014). In more recent years, Dollar Tree falls more into the analyzer strategy of the Miles and Snow Framework and is currently in the shakeout stage of the industry life cycle. According to Parnell (2014), …show more content…
Assuming that Dollar Tree falls into the discount retail industry, it would fall into the strategic group with stores such as Dollar World, 99 cents only, Big Lots, Dollar General, Dollarama, and Fred’s to name a few. Some of these stores practice under the low cost- single price concept. Stores such as Dollarama, Dollar World, 99 cents only, and Dollar Tree all offer a variety of products but price them at a single price; meaning everything in the store is say $1.00 or less. A second group of these groups fall into the low-cost- multi price concept meaning that they offer low price products but have products at all different price ranges. Dollar General, Big Lots and Fred’s fall into this strategic group. According to our text, it is often difficult to determine if a company differentiates or not and can be a subjective topic. In my opinion all of these businesses fall into the focus-low-cost strategy of Porter’s Generic Strategies because they are all gearing or focusing their product offering on a lower income

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