M&a Case Study Of Whole Foods Market In United States

Supermarkets usually have cleaner and more sanitary environment than traditional farmer’s markets in China, providing fresher and healthier perishables. As a result, more customers choose supermarkets as their priority to buy vegetables and other perishables. Meanwhile, development in transportation and logistics industry allows the large perishable supermarket chains and some small local businesses to establish the purchasing systems collaborating with local farms to reduce the segments in wholesale stage, which leads to price advantages. In addition, disorganized management, stalls fee and relative smaller purchasing scale make farmer’s markets lose their competitive edge on price while worse shopping experience is also driving customers to perishable supermarkets.However, domestic perishable supermarkets are in the early stage of the industry when the most typical businesses are community stores and convenience stores and only Yonghui Supermarkets can be counted as perishable supermarkets among domestic listed companies. In recent years, small businesses spread widely in China while large scale supermarkets are focusing on the construction of purchasing and distribution center. Almost all the businesses are expanding their scales by opening new stores.The same industry is more developed in USA. So far, the largest natural foods and organic foods retailer is Whole Foods Market whose over70%products are perishables. Throughout its history, near1/3of its total stores are acquired, especially the53stores which had been acquired from Wild Oats Market in2007. Many of Whole Foods’M&A helped the company expand market share to gain scale effect while developed its financing strategy. This paper aims at combing the M&A of WFM especially analyzing the synergy effects and the financing method in the case of acquisition with WATS, as a reference to domestic perishable supermarkets’M&A.