Buc-ee's: Highway Oasis for Texas and Beyond - Essay Sample

Introduction

Buc-ee's is a convenience store chain and gas stations with a vast following across Texas. Beaver Aplin and Don Wasek founded the company. It is rapidly expanding across the United States, with the recent move to open its location Alabama, and plans to open more locations in Florida. The chain is big-sized highway pit stop with the accessible bathrooms, clean restrooms, beef-jerky bar, wide home, fresh fudge and branded T-shirts. The company is a large highway oasis with several signs along the road, providing direction to travellers. The company deals with gas products, food and the best T-shirts. More importantly, Buc-ee's offers products which are mostly found in similar stores such as cigarettes, tobacco, chips, fuel and drinks. The traveller's center comprises of the deli, car washes, and coffee shop among others.

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Strength and Weaknesses

Regarding strength, the company has the cleanest bathrooms in the United States. The clean facilities, especially the toilet, give a good reputation of the company than other competitors in the same industry (David, & David, 2013). Many customers, especially travellers, would be willing to drop at a place with a higher level of hygiene, and that would increase the volume of sale for the company. For instance, the company won a contest of having the cleanest bathroom. The company pays well to its employees; for example, the cashier started at $13per hour, while a Team Leader earns $18per hour. Better payment motivates workers and improves on their performance. The opening of a new location also helped in reducing gas prices up to about $3.02 from $3.50, and lowering the burden on drivers, thereby, increasing sales volume (Ansoff et al., 2018). Such strengths positioned the company ahead of its competitors.

Contrarily, the company is burdened with several weaknesses which require rapid actions to correct. The company tolerates poor service from workers comprising of delays which makes prompt regular complains of time consumptions (Hill, Jones, & Schilling, 2014). Buc-ee's have poor technological security which exposes the company risks of bandits. For instance, the report by the Houston Chronicle revealed that the company was targeted by a group of thieves in 2015 (David, & David, 2013). The bandits used the information from the stolen cards in making physical cards to purchase items from the company. Despite the bigger size of the company, its challenge includes lack of pump that can serve big trucks. The station serves the average vehicles and Trucks have never stopped at the station allowing a drawback for a decrease in sales volume.

Opportunities and Threats

Buc-ee's company faces the threat of increased customer demand and the perpetual changes in technology. Concerning the persistence changes in customer demands, technology has tremendously transformed the nature of customer expectations, while increasing engagement and experience (Ansoff et al., 2018). It is a change for the company because reputation and customer satisfaction is of significance. The customers have adopted online shopping, whether it is for a birthday or a gift. Many customers do their shopping before the travel thereby avoiding the stop-over meals at Buc-ee's Company. Some customers branch at the small shops to purchase snacks as they travel while others branch at a boutique to buy some clothes. Additionally, the company is faced with a shortage of experienced personnel (David & David, 2013). Buc-ee's company has the opportunity to act incongruently to the growth of the company through poaching of experienced workers to serve customers. Buc-ee's should also focus on identifying and addressing issues of wages to motive employees and increase their performance.

Uncertainty in travelling is another challenge for Buc-ee's company. The company is facing a period of uncertainty while struggling to give a unique experience for both domestic and foreign travellers (Hill et al., 2014). Therefore, the company should ensure that the employees are well conversant with the cultural diversity of the travellers and specific expectations of some visitors (Ansoff et al., 2018). More imperatively, the company should incorporate technology in their services to enhance service delivery and improve on performance. Due to the frequent changes in regulations, Buc-ee's company should conduct frequent evaluations to addresses particular risks in the company.

Capabilities

Based on appropriate decisions, Buc-ee's had the best performance with estimated revenue of $275 million (Hill et al., 2014). Don and Aplin were targeting an affluent market segment without discount on sales and only targeting the average motorists while avoiding the big trucks. They have built a good reputation say a huge number of customers (David & David, 2013). Buc-ee's have taken the advantages in the period of low interest rates in financing the expansion, which is designed to make the company more powerful in the southeast. The company has 32 stores, and the decision to have two more stores, especially in Daytona Beach will enhance its growth in the United States.

The company's move to construct a new highway interchange in Katy, with several gas pumps and retail space; will employ more workers and can be the largest carwash in the world. Aplin also designed a new restroom; the construction is set to have spacious entryways which are decorated using Texas-themed maps (Ansoff et al., 2018). The construction, expansions and marketing plans will increase sales and promote performance, as well as enhancing Buc-ee's perception.

How to Achieve Organizational Capabilities

Aligning and Improving People Practice

Generally, people practice is ready for enhancement in every organization. The process of achieving organizational capability involves the building of employee skills and competencies, which trigger high organizational performance (David, & David, 2013). Despite the primary role of managers in leadership competencies and workers engagement, Human Resource has significant responsibility in boosting employee competencies.

Structure Align With Business Strategy

Lack of proper organizational process and boundaries may lead to unconstructive corporate culture, which may adversely affect the organization (David, & David, 2013). Employee's effort would be perceived with attempting to create order and maybe blaming other people for their predicaments. Therefore, the organization should provide structural underpinnings which can accommodate varying leadership as the market condition fluctuates.

Business-Level Strategy

Buc-ee's ltd explores business-level strategy in its operations to achieve its short and long term goals. The company uses a cost leadership strategy by competing for wider customers and increasing sales based on the prices it offers. Buc-ee's offer standardized prices to entice more customers on their products (Ansoff et al., 2018). Another strategy is differentiation; the company provides value to the clients through unique products instead of lowering the price. Unique products are realized through ensuring high quality and the use of advanced technology (David, & David, 2013). Focused low cost, Buc-ee's also chooses to sell mainly to travellers, hence concentrating on a segment of customers. Finally, the company uses a low-cost integrated strategy to adapt to environmental changes, get new skills, and technology.

Discussion and Recommendation

The company is among the best chain store in the country, its construction, expansions and opening new locations across the United States would make it the best industry in the world (Hill et al., 2014). Buc-ee's best restrooms and washrooms attract a huge number of customers, therefore maintaining its standard in terms of hygiene and service delivery would persistently enhance performance (Ansoff et al., 2018). The leaders should invest more of their effort on building employee competency and providing proper training to workers to immensely equip employees with the required skills for better performance. Through lowering prices and ensuring quality products, Buc-ee's would outsmart all the companies in the same industry. Uncertainty of travellers requires proper strategy by the decision-maker of the company to ensure persistency flow of guests.

References

Ansoff, H. I., Kipley, D., Lewis, A. O., Helm-Stevens, R., & Ansoff, R. (2018). Implanting strategic management. Springer.

Hill, C. W., Jones, G. R., & Schilling, M. A. (2014). Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach. Cengage Learning.

David, F. R., & David, F. R. (2013). Strategic management: Concepts and cases: A competitive advantage approach. Pearson.