零售业的战略契合力

Strengthening and aligning seven strategic elements By Darrell Rigby, Zach First, and Sanjin Bicanic The Power of Strategic Fit in Retail At a Glance New Bain & Company research shows how leading retailers become more than the sum of their Our analysis of the largest US retailers finds those that strengthen and align the criticalelements of strategy on average generate significantly stronger investor returns. Amid today’s volatility, retailers that excel at strategic fit are prioritizing agility and resiliencewhile deepening their commitment to stakeholder value creation. Retail is both a mirror and a motor of the global economy. Not only does it rapidly reflect shifts inmacroeconomic conditions and shopper priorities, but it also propels economic growth around the world.In markets such as the US, where the industry supports more than one in four jobs and contributes more The history of retail is also a cautionary tale of how fragile success can be for any company. There’s nosafety in scale alone. Scale certainly creates the potential for substantial benefits, but without strategicfit to hold a company together and guide its adaptation in times of change, even the largest companiescan lose momentum. The 10 US-based retailers with the highest revenues in 1990 were Walmart, Kmart(not to be confused with Australia and New Zealand’s Kmart Group), Sears, American Stores, Kroger, Learning from the largest retailers This article examines the current state of strategy in the US retail industry, highlighting how the largestretailers are responding to macroeconomic shifts and identifying areas that need further strategicimprovement. The primary focus is on the 10 largest retailers by 2024 US revenue—Walmart, Amazon, To guide the research and synthesize its findings, we applied the strategic fit framework, as describedin our recentHarvard Business Reviewcover story (see the article “The Power of Strategic Fit,”HBR,March–April 2025). Strategic fit is what makes a company greater than the sum of its parts, and it The Power of Strategic Fit in Retail •Mental models:How a company’s employees perceive and interpret reality—guiding what theorganization believes, notices, overlooks, and prioritizes with its strategy. •Purpose and ambitions:Why the company exists, what it promises to do for others, and what itseeks to achieve for itself—financially, operationally, and strategically. •Stakeholder value creation:How the company unleashes and rewards the potential of parties thatimpact and are impacted by its strategy—such as customers, employees, suppliers and strategic •Markets and products:Where the company chooses to compete—and how it reassesses its choices •Competitive advantages:The unique strengths that enable the company to outperform rivals in its •Macro forces:How the company responds to demographic trends, political and legal factors, •Operating model:The organizational engine that turns strategy into results, spanning governance,leadership, culture, talent and performance management, and business processes (including the After analyzing these strategic factors for the 10 largest US retailers today, we scored each retailer’sperformance on all factors using a scale of 0 (low) to 10 (high). The process gauged not only thestandalone strength of every strategic element but also how each one reinforced—or conflicted with— Our research has so far revealed three key insights about today’s largest US retailers. The first is that theyare bracing for increasing uncertainty. The second is that seemingly small strategic differences can createlarge variations in total shareholder return. The third is that stakeholder value creation is the next frontier 1. The largest retailers are bracing for increasing uncertainty Retailers are navigating a landscape marked by exceptionally chaotic conditions, including cost volatilityand inflation risks, labor market constraints, unprecedented tariff changes and supply chain disruptions,and shifting stakeholder behaviors. Add to that scenario political polarization, regulatory unpredictability, The Power of Strategic Fit in Retail Perfect predictions are impossible in complex systems with such high levels of irreducible uncertainty.What matters more is greater agility and resilience. Retailers today face a profound dilemma: They’re under constant pressure to protect and grow earnings,yet doing so sustainably requires investing in capabilities that may not pay off immediately—like supplychain redundancy, technology and data infrastructures, scenario planning, and employee resilience. In alow-margin, high-volatility environment, every dollar spent on buffers, backups, and flexibility competeswith the demands of short-term profitability. Leaders must decide whether to carry excess inventory tohedge against disruptions or minimize working capital to meet quarterly expectations; whether to invest The choices retailers make under pressure often reveal deeply held—but rarely