Since Arla Foods expressively outlines its product quality, direction (incremental growth), and competitive advantage (value orientation), it is extremely helpful in defining the business strategy.
In the context of Arla Foods’ mission and vision, which point in the direction of a customer-oriented approach and emphasis on quality management, its strategy statement appears to be rather evident. Specifically, Arla Foods clearly represents its customers as its main stakeholders as it promises to “secure the highest value for our farmers’ milk” (“Missions,” 2021). In fact, the company’s attitude toward customers is explicitly visible in the statement, with the promise of “the highest value” and “health” showing the high regard in which the company holds its clients (Chen et al., 2018; Saidarka & Rusfian, 2019).
In turn, the operations observed at Arla Foods support its strategic statement properly. For instance, Arla Foods has specifically developed a quality assurance program, “Arlagården®,” which suggests that the company excels at maximizing its competitive advantage. Thus, both its mission of increasing the value of the product and its intent of producing healthy food are met (Baral & Pokharel, 2017; Cortés Sánchez, 2018).
Arla Foods’ strategy statement is quite helpful to the organization since it explains the company’s goal as clearly as possible, thus, setting expectations in the target audiences and demonstrating how it will achieve the goal in question by representing its competitive advantage. Consequently, the strategy statement implied in Arla Foods’s mission and vision statements are exceptionally useful and helpful for the company (Salehi-Kordabadi et al., 2020; Sengupta & Sahay, 2017).
The strategy statement under analysis has the obvious advantage of being concise yet informative. Moreover, it establishes an immediate rapport with target customers by showing how Arla Foods values them. Finally, the company’s acceptance of innovations and the positive intentions of promoting global health improvement serve to the benefit of the organization as it promises to improve health globally (González-Moreno et al., 2019). However, the strategy statement has a crucial problem of failing to name customers as its key stakeholders directly (Sinha, 2020). Moreover, the emphasis on competitive yet high prices may drive customers away from the company (Hill, 2017).
Nevertheless, by detailing its competitive advantage and explaining its attention to product quality, Arla Foods has managed to create a compelling strategy statement. The statement is undeniably helpful since it encourages the audience to explore Arla Foods’ market identity further, discovering its outstanding product quality.
Reference List
Baral, N. and Pokharel, M. P. (2017) ‘How sustainability is reflected in the S&P 500 companies’ strategic documents’, Organization & Environment, 30(2), pp. 122-141. Web.
Chen, K. J., Yeh, T. M., Pai, F. Y. and Chen, D. F. (2018) ‘Integrating refined kano model and QFD for service quality improvement in healthy fast-food chain restaurants’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(7), p. 1310. Web.
Saidarka, G. A. and Rusfian, E. Z. (2019) ‘Comparative study on brand equity of fast food restaurants in Indonesia’, International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change, 8(6), pp. 292-302.
Cortés Sánchez, J. D. (2018) ‘Mission statements of universities worldwide: Text mining and visualization’, Intangible Capital, 14(4), pp. 584-603. Web.
Salehi-Kordabadi, S., Karimi, S. and Qorbani-Azar, M. (2020) ‘The relationship between mission statement and firms’ performance’, International Journal of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science, 9(1), pp. 21-36. Web.
Sengupta, S. and Sahay, A. (2017) ‘Comparing mission statements of social enterprises and corporate enterprises in the new and renewable energy sector of India: A computer aided content analysis study’, Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 7(1), pp. 1-16. Web.
González-Moreno, Á., Triguero, Á. and Sáez-Martínez, F. J. (2019) ‘Many or trusted partners for eco-innovation? The influence of breadth and depth of firms’ knowledge network in the food sector’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 147, pp. 51-62. Web.
Sinha, V. C. (2020) Business environment: A publication of SBPD Publishing House (Sanjay Sahitya Bhawan) SBPD Publishing House.
Hill, T. (2017) Manufacturing strategy: The strategic management of the manufacturing function. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Missions. (2021). Web.