Pivot Points

...a pivot point that will magnify the effects of focused energy and resources.

To achieve leverage, the strategist must have insight into a pivot point that will magnify the effects of focused energy and resources.  As an example of a pivotal objective in 2008 Noritoshi Murata, the president and chief operating officer of Seven & i Holdings was discussing competitive strategy.  This company owns all of the 7-Eleven convenience stores in the United States and Asia, as well as grocery superstores and department stores in Japan and other ventures.

Focusing on Japan, Murata explained that the company had come to the conclusion that Japanese customers were extremely sensitive to variations in local tastes and fond of both newness and variety.  "In Japan," he said, "consumers are easily bored.  In soft drinks for example, there are more than two hundred soft-drink brands and lots of new ones each week.  a 7-Eleven displays fifty varieties with a turnover of seventy percent each year.  The same holds true for food categories."

To create leverage around this patter, 7-Eleven Japan has developed a method of collecting information from store managers and employees about local tastes and forming quick-response merchandising teams to develop new product offerings.  To further leverage this information and team skills, the company has developed relationships with a number of second and third tier food manufacturers and found ways to quickly bring new offering to market under its own private-label brand, at low prices, using the food manufacturerss' excess capacity.

ACTION POINT: Look for the trends that will lead you to focus on pivot points for creating strategic advantage.