Lululemon Athletica Functional Areas
This is business policy, and the company is Lululemon
So here is what you need to do.
1. Company overview is not necessary this time. You can leave it out.
2. List and describe the major functional areas of your company; Raw Materials, R&D, Production/Manufacturing, Distribution, Sales marketing/sales, customer service(Primary areas). Again for some of you, raw materials will be kind of short. Iphones use electronic parts, plastics, rubber etc etc. Can be sourced from many places. For production, some of you have internet companies, so you are providing a service or offering. That service has to be created by either programmers or solution experts. R&D may be doing more analysis of how to bring the components of a service offering together.
3. Don't forget the support or secondary functional areas areas as well. HR, IT, Exec Mgmt. Legal, Procurement Finance, Accounting etc.
4. For each functional area please give a description of the major processes that occur in each keeping in mind the 4 building blocks of competitive advantage where they may apply, Superior efficiency, superior quality, superior customer service, and superior innovation. Not all 4 will apply in each category, the goal here is to use these building blocks, and key tangible/intangible resources to flush out issues relating to the primary and secondary functional areas.
Now you don't have to list building blocks in each functional area in your paper unless it really applies. But instead use these items as tools to flush out potential issues.
There are other tools to use as well. You may want to use Strengths and Weaknesses from SWOT. SW can be applied to internal more easily than Opportunities and Threats which are used to describe external factors.
At the end of the paper, please include in your conclusions a summary of what you feel is the Distinctive Competency of the company, and what are the potential issues. You may want to read through your external paper to point you to issues that may be related to and give light to issues in the functional areas. Please no recommendations yet in the internal analysis paper. List your references
Hint: start practicing with doing searches on the internet for functional areas within your company. (ex. Hershey and exec management issues), or (key raw materials for Hershey chocolate). You may also want to refer to the company annual report. Take a look at Glassdoor for HR info and what it is like to work at the company. Please list your key references.
Lululemon Athletica Functional Areas
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Lululemon Athletica Functional Areas
1 Primary Functional areas
Raw Materials
The company ensures the raw materials sourced help promote a sustainable environment. Lululemon takes this as an opportunity that bring a positive impact to the world while still improving its supply chain process. The company ensures that they trace the source for the raw materials and partner with organizations such as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition hence keeping up with the industrial changes that affect raw materials. For instance, Lululemon has upheld strong animal welfare practices that ensure the down raw material supplied to the company is a bi-product from the food industry rather than live-plucked (Lululemon, 2023). Further, the choice of forest-based fabrics such as rayon, viscose, and modal are sourced in a way the company preserves the forests through partnering with Canopy an environment organization.
R&D
Lululemon's main focus is to instill product innovation in the company to achieve its three goals product innovation, guest experience, and market expansion. Through research and development, the company ranked top in 2021 after having the largest market share in the apparel industry. Also, the brand revenues increased from 3.3 billion dollars to 6.25 billion dollars from 2018 to 2021. The company intends to develop innovative products that will double revenues generated from men's apparel and digital sales thus promoting the company's growth. In addition, the company will expand women's apparel and accessories from the existing innovations in the yoga, running, and training sectors which will also grow the company (Lululemon, 2023). The company has a research and development department called white space where products are continually developed to achieve quality and maximum customer satisfaction.
Production/ Manufacturing
The company maximizes its profits by outsourcing the manufacturing services. The company has partnered with at least sixty suppliers with only one manufacturer producing its major fabric Luon. The company's manufacturers have been distributed to 26 countries globally such as Japan, Taiwan, Haiti, and Indonesia (Thangavelu, 2022). For efficient operations on speed delivery, the North American supplier helps the company achieve it besides moving with fashion trends.
Distribution
The company owns four distributors in Vancouver, Melbourne, Summer, and Columbus that help smoothen delivery of products ordered online faster. Products are distributed in both local and international markets through selling products from its stores, malls, streets, and lifestyle centers.
Sales Marketing
The company owns a network of stores that it uses to make its sales besides selling online directly to its customers. The company has over five hundred and twenty stores globally with at least 315 located in the United States while others are in Canada, China, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The company gathers customer feedback through interacting directly with customers from its stores. In addition, customers can buy goods from the company website or using mobile apps. Also, the company has created a website for the countries and regions they operate for customers to buy products (Thangavelu, 2022). Hence, the company has utilized digital and e-commerce to market its brand to customers and to other wholesalers such as fitness centers, health clubs, and yoga studios that might be interested in their products.
Customer Service
Due to its exemplary customer service, the company has been able to maintain its competitive edge in the apparel retail market. Hence a strength that is achieved through ensuring the products of high quality that have been uniquely developed distinguishing it from other competitor’s brands. Apart from its good customer care support services, the company considers the preferences of the local customers and the community at large in customizing its business module (Hill et al., 2020). Also, the quality of the products aligns with the interest of its customers through intensive research using data analytics to analyze customer feedback and customize a response that ensures the customer maintains their loyalty.
2 Secondary Functional Areas
Human Resource
The human r...