AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The topic of the thesis is improving the competitiveness of the case company. We will regard Suguo as the case compamy. We focused on a Chinese local convenience store, and compared it in four perspectives with an international convenience store which has already entered the Chinese market successfully. The four perspectives are market perspective, customer perspective, management perspective, and decorative style perspective. In addition, we created a strategic map on the basis of the consumer perspective, internal perspective, and learning and growth perspective for the case company with reliance on the analyses of the data collected for this research. We studied previous research into and literature on the definition of convenience store, market and marketing, strategic management, human resource management, corporate reputation and brand building, and a strategic map. The primary objective of the thesis research is to analyze the situation of the case company and its market, in order to create a strategic map. The second objective of the thesis research is to find out how to improve the Chinese local convenience store’s competitive ability in the domestic market. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are applied into this single case study for the case company. Three interviews were conducted with the manager, one of the employees, and one of customers for acquiring the information of the current situation of the case company. Furthermore, 150 questionnaires were sent to prospective respondents for devising the strategic map for the case company. Through discussing theoretical materials, doing in-depth interviews, and collecting data from questionnaires, this research illustrates the importance of market and strategic management analysis for the case study. The outcomes of the thesis research is a strategic marketing plan, the SWOT analysis, and a strategic map developed for the case company.