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ccccccccccccThis report helps you understand what it means by the term Vision, Mission and
Values. It specifically talks about the Vision, Mission and Values of Whole Foods Market an
American natural and organic grocery company.

Whole Foods Market is th e world¶s largest retail chain of supermarkets providing

natural and organic foods to its consumers and was established in 1980 by John Mackey ,
the co-founder and its current CEO.

This report analyses Whole Foods Markets case study and based on that
recommendations to create an empowered culture, designing new performance based
incentive plan, conducting SWOT analysis to identify internal strengths of the company and
plans to identify clear target markets are been presented

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John.P.Mackey is the co-founder and has served as a CEO of Whole Foods Market
since 1980. He started with one small store in Austin Texas and today the company are the
leaders in natural and organic food supply. They have more than 27 0 stores in North
America and United Kingdom. The company credits its success to its unshakeable mission
of ³Selling highest quality natural and organic food´ and maintaining strict quality standards.

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Values can be defined as qualities or abilities that an organization or company

considers valuable. They incorporate individual¶s utmost priorities and the forces that
motivate them to do their best.

Core values developed by Whole Foods Market describe how people should behave
with each other in the organization. This dictates what actions they are focusing on to
provide and generate value for their customers, suppliers, stakeholders and their
community. Most of the values are lived and acted upon by individuals within the
organization.

Management and company personnel share five core values that are truly important
for Whole Foods Market. The values and the competitive strategy used by the company are
as follows:

„ Selling the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products available. ±

Competing on cost & quality variable. Competing via differentiation and
distribution strategy
„ Satisfying and Delighting Our Customers.
„ Creating Wealth Through Profits & Growt h. Competing by being part of
„ Team Member Happiness and Excellence. community and internal
„ Caring About Our Communities & Our Environment ×cengagement.
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 ›y reading the examples whereby the buyers personally visited the facilities of many
of the company¶s suppliers to pick and choose items gives us the confidence the values are
lived upon. Company has also designed a strict quality standards list that they encourage
the suppliers to abide by. Customers who visited Whole Foods Market were delighted and
walked out carrying a lot of satisfaction.

Whole Foods have created stores that give customers the ability to gather, learn,
interact and enjoy food shoppi ng and eating experience. Store designs are innovative and
different which gives customers a welcoming aura and feeling. Customers get to meet in -
store chefs who have the expertise to provide assistance and valuable information to them.

Various types of incentive programs and compensation streams have been designed
for Whole Foods employees. These programs gives employees the chance to live the
experience of Own it, Do it; whereby they can be part of owning the company and doing
something everyday to make it a better place to work in.

Whole Foods is successful in generating wealth and profit for its stakeholders
through purchasing and distribution strategies.

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Vision is a proclamation describing what an organization is wanting to or striving to

become. It¶s important for vision to be resonated by all the members of an organization as
this helps them feel part of something. More importantly vision should give direction to an
organization and should be future orientated.

27 years ago when the company was established Mr. Mackey¶s vision was to make
Whole Foods Market an international brand by providing high quality natural and organic
foods to more and more customers in more and more communities, that would gradually
transform diets of individual in a manner, that would help them live longer, healthier and
more pleasurable lives.

The vision statement describes Whole Foods Market¶s future direction; it paints the
picture of the kind of company that Mackey is trying to create. The statement communicates
a sense of direction telling us that the company at this stage is at location ³A´ and wants to
get to location ³›´. In the past years company has attained lot of success by making itself
one of the fortune 500 companies and that in its elf says that the company and its
management and employees are focused and are heading in the same direction.

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The generic term ³mission´ means describing what an organization does. Few
elements that the statement should consist are: what busines s is the organization in, what is
the organizations main purpose and statement should be well -known amongst each member
of the organization.

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 Whole Foods Market mission is to help support the health, well being and healing of
people that are customers, team member¶s business organizations and the planet. The
representation of the mission statement is ³Whole Food, Whole People, Whole Planet´.

The core part of the mission statement is ³Quality´, quality in the type of food Whole
Foods Market provide and qua lity present in sourcing that. Quality in recruiting people that
form part of their team, that help in building a profitable and beneficial company. Quality in
exhibiting their responsibility towards the planet and its people and this is shown by their w ay
of supporting community, sponsoring events and contributing their profit in form of charity.

The mission statement incorporates the elements of showing the type of customer
needs being met. Also outlines how the needs are being met by the way of explaining how
they source the quality food. c

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Whole Foods Market offers an opportunity to people to choose a healthy and strong
lifestyle. ›y understanding its core values it can be said that some parts of the values are
strategically aligned with the company¶s vision and mission. This enabled Whole Foods to
become who they wan ted to be. Quality was at the heart of everything they did, which is
from selecting the produce to selling , or hiring people to work for them or supporting the
community and the planet.

Outlined below is a comparison table that indicates how attractive ar e the values of
Whole Foods Market when compared with Porters five competitive forces.

 
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„ccSelling the Highest Quality Natural and
Organic Products available.
„ccSatisfying and Delighting Our Customers.
„ccTeam Member Happiness and Excellence.
„ccCreating Wealth Through Profits & Growth.
„ccCaring About Our Communities & Our
Environment×c
„ccccCompetition ± if right amount of resources
are available entry into organic food
market is easy.
„ccccSubstitutes ± Organic food is expensive to
produce and therefore production cost is
passed on to consumers, this can have a
huge impact on individuals buying decision
since organic food can easily be
substituted by non -organic food.
„cccc›uyers ± again organic food is perishable
category so buyers can buy large orders if
they are to consume it directly with out
storing it for many days.
„ccccSupplier ± due to the nature of product
that is been offered, few suppliers currently
stand in the market.
„cccc‘ivalry ± examples and cases indicate
that Whole Foods is perceived as the
market leader, however has exhibited
healthy competition with other players.

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First two values havebeen discussed prev iously and indicate that they have been
incorporated within the company¶s day to day functionality. However part where Whole
Foods declares creating an empowered culture, this could be challenged especially after
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understanding how stores are evaluated ri gorously not only by customers but by head office
and other stores within the same or different region. From our perspective this behaviour
instead takes away the empowerment from employee¶s hands and is passed on to the
management. This means that the m anagement is implementing a push strategy while the
recommendation would be to allow stores to ask for help, assistance or support from the
management when required and in turn implementing a pull strategy. This will ensure that
Whole Foods live by its va lue.

EVA is the performance measurement tool used by Whole Foods since 2001, there is
lack of measuring stores service quality as it¶s purely based on stores ability to generate net
revenue. Also does not include individual success measurement which can d e-motivate
high performing individuals. ›y focusing purely on revenue based incentives Whole Foods
management is unable to identify opportunities of personalizing incentive e.g. work -life
balance.

While discussing its vision statement it was observed that it is not distinctive as any
company can adopt or plagiarize the statement, there is nothing unique about the vision
statement and is unable to create a unique company identity. The vision statement has
been standard since 1980¶s and does not incorporate any room to advance, change
according to market conditions or customer demands. The vision is John Mackey¶s vision
and a key question that arises for many leaders outside the company is how their vision
translates to the various organizational levels (Mc Laurin, 2008)

The factors that Whole Foods Market should consider to decide its future direction
are:

„cccccccccExternal Factors:

-cccccccStrategies to deal with competition that can enable company to

enhance its prospects.

-cccccccPricing strategies should be considered to maintain and attract

further market share.

-cccccccInvest in research and development to come up with better

technology to offer buyers and suppliers more power.

„cccccccccInternal Factors:

-cccccccUtilize SWOT analysis to identify company¶s internal strength,

weakness, opportunities and threats to understand its ability to get
into new business.

The key element that the mission statement fails to communicate is the type of
customer the company is targeting, which means there is no c lear or set market segment
that Whole Foods Market have decided or planned to attain. It¶s important for any given
company to have a clear and defined target market. ›y clearly identifying the target market
Whole Foods Market will be able to better utili se its resources which will enable them to
make better decision about store and geographic location. This will ensure that fewer
resources are wasted and cut on overhead cost.
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In conclusion to answer the question which is been disc ussed in the report. We
conclude that some values support the vision and mission of Whole Foods Market. The
Whole Foods Market is in the business of selling organic food so that their customers can
live longer and eat healthy. Their vision and mission is built so that it aligns with their five
core values. Their motto is ³Whole food Whole People Whole Planet´ which strives to go
beyond just being a fresh food retailer. They not only make us aware of their core values but
also explain their importance, wh ich is how people feel to be shopping in the stores and/or
working for the organisation. Their vision is to be the selling organic food all over America
and to expand overseas; and they are able to do this by strictly aligning their mission with
their core values of high quality fresh food and satisfied customers and happy team
members. This alignment is reflected in their increase in sales, expansion of stores and low
staff turnover.

However recommendations are been presented while analyzing the question, this will
enable the company to head in the right direction and also ensuring that all its values are
linked with its vision and mission.

Following points concludes the recommendations that we offer:

„cccccccccTime to change the Vision of the company. It is old, been there for long time
and should include room for integrating continuous market changes.

„cccccccccIn order to create a truly empowered culture Whole Foods should

utilize pull strategy instead of push.

„cccccccccNew performance and incentive measuring tools should be

considered. Try and include personalized incentive types.

„cccccccccUse Porter¶s Five forces model to understand effect of external forces

on the business.

„cccccccccConduct SWOT analysis to identify internal strength, weakness,

opportunities and threats.

„cccccccccCommunicate the mission of the company to join hands with every

individual personnel of the company.

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