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Final Marketing Plan
Overview
I have chosen Office Depot/Office Max for my consultant progress report. This
company has been a merged office supply store for over 3 years. However, Office
Depot has been in business for 30 years, and Office Max has been in business for 28
years. The merged business has over 1,100 stores in the United States, and over 400
stores in other parts of the world. Based on their 2015 10-K report, they have over
$14 billion net sales, which equates to $8 million net income. The types of products
that they sell range from basic office equipment, such as pencils, and paperclips, all
the way to major office equipment, such as desks/tables, chairs, computers, and
printers. They have recently started servicing computers for multiple issues.
Opportunities and/or Threats
This business has many different opportunities for growth in the economy.
One major opportunity is the growth of the technology world in today’s society.
Everyone needs or wants a computer or some other type of technology, meaning
Office Depot/Office Max will more than likely always have customers who will
purchase their computer related items from this business. However, with that being
said, Office Depot/Office Max is a highly priced office supply store, meaning they
charge more than their competitors, such as Staples. In the city of Chillicothe, I feel
that this is a huge threat to their business, and this might be the same for around
the country. If they could lower their prices to a more reasonable area, then the
demographic of this area would be able to afford their good products, but until this
happens it could be a threat to this business.
Competitors
Direct competition in the office supply chain is slim to none. There are only a
handful of other major office supply stores, some examples would be Staples and
Office City Express. Those two competitors would be Office Depot/Office Max’s
direct competitors since they specialize in office supply products. Office Depot/Office
Max has the highest overall prices for their products compared to their direct
competitors. However, Office Depot/Office Max tends to have the higher quality
items, or the more novelty items, such as Tull pens or Serta office chairs. With
having higher quality items it tends to raise the overall pricing of the business.
With Staples offering good, yet smaller quality items, they are able to lower their
prices to meet the financial needs of their customers.
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Some of their indirect competitors could be any store that sells office supplies,
such as Walmart, Dollar Store, Krogers, Target, and Meijer. For the most part,
these stores seem to be selling office supplies cheaper than Office Depot/Office Max.
A reason for this could be that since they don’t specialize in office supplies, they
don’t have to focus on just those items. Walmart is definitely the cheapest of all of
their indirect competitors, which could be the reasoning for why many customers
are choosing to purchase minor office supplies here instead of Office Depot/Office
Max. Another reason for why people choose to purchase their items from Office
Depot/Office Max’s indirect competition is that all of those stores are a convenient
store for most people, meaning they can purchase more than just office supplies
when going into the stores.
Strengths and/or Weaknesses
Along with Office Depot/Office Max’s opportunity to grow as technology
grows, they have a strength with this concept. Overall they have increased their
technology to meet the needs of their loyal customers, meaning they have the latest
software, the latest model of computers and/or printers, and their staff are up-to-
date on the latest technological concepts. A weakness would be their pricing. Like I
