The Migros Group strategy paper

Our vision: Migros – a better life every day

Migros is recognised by its customers, its employees and among the general public as the leading company for improving quality of life. We cater to the needs of everyday life with our consumer and service products. We target our offering to all levels of society and their specific needs in terms of quality of life.

Our way forward together

The group strategy provides a framework for the orientation of Migros’ strategic business units. Linked to it are annual agreements on targets and roles, which the Executive Board fulfils. Adopting and following strategic initiatives creates the potential for added value, something that can only be achieved in a joint, integrated effort.

Our three key targets

1. We want to remain the undisputed market leader in the Swiss retail sector. In other business units we can lay claim to a leading role in the market segment concerned.
   
   In the tradition of Gottlieb Duttweiler, we undertake to offer our customers the best value for money.
   
   It is an advantage for us that in the Cooperative Retailing sector major components of value added are under our own control. In this sense, within the Group we operate industrial, logistics and retail enterprises.
   
   Our own industrial companies fulfil a dual role here: they develop and manufacture innovative own brands offering solid Swiss quality at reasonable prices and sell to third parties in Switzerland and other countries.
   
   This will help us, especially in the Cooperative Retailing sector, to position ourselves as the product leader, and also in the long term to set ourselves apart from our competitors.
   
   International purchasing enables us to buy reasonably priced products while taking ethical and ecological principles into account.
    
2. We target stronger growth abroad, with the intention of thereby strengthening the existing business units and the Migros Group.
    
3. For the Migros Group as a whole, we aim for profitable growth.

Our benefit pledge...

...to our customers: Migros is the Swiss company that is passionately committed to improving the quality of life of all of its customers.
...to our employees: As a model employer we provide our employees with the right conditions for a motivating, performance-oriented working environment that attracts the best workers.
...to our cooperative members: We give our cooperative members our undertaking to create values that will guarantee the continued existence of Migros as an independent entity for the long term.
...to our suppliers: With the free market economy and performance-oriented competition as a basis, we aim for direct cooperation with our suppliers. We are consistently improving our products and services, and also set ecological and social standards for working and production conditions.
...to the society: We promote the free, responsible development of human beings. The Migros Culture Percentage provides a broad section of the population with access to culture and education and enables people to be a part of the cultural, social and economic changes in society. We take care of the environment and provide pioneering services in this respect.

Migros’s strategic business units and business entities act as stand-alone businesses inasmuch possible. They are given clear objectives and roles. Potential synergies between the businesses are utilised to the full.

Our values

Basic cooperative idea – Our identity is shaped by the basic cooperative idea – this enables us to utilise the profits that are not needed to safeguard the company to improve the quality of life of our customers, employees and society. Being a cooperative also means that many interests must be in tune with each other and taken into account – in this case we are multifaceted, just like Switzerland with its basic federal structure.
Tradition and diversity – We are proud of the fact that we are a Swiss company – as well as of our tradition and history. At the same time, we are receptive to global diversity.
Sustainability – We are success- and performance-oriented, while being committed to sustainability. This means finding a balance between business, environmental and social demands.
Credibility – We are trustworthy because in our business relationships we think, talk and act honestly, predictably and reliably. We make ourselves trustworthy by checking, and having others check, that we really deliver what we promise. We maintain an open dialogue, both internally and externally.
Openness – Our openness, curiosity and interests are geared to improving the quality of life of our customers.
Passion – We draw inspiration from analysing their needs, and apply our entire professional passion to constantly taking them by surprise, in a positive way, and to keeping them happy with our products and services.

Our organisational structure

The Migros Group breaks down into five strategic business units (SBUs), which are supplemented by the cross-unit functions of Shared Services and Group functions. The SBUs consist of:

• Cooperative Retailing
• Commerce
• Industry & Wholesaling
• Financial Services
• Travel

At the secondary management level, one or more business entities (BEs) is allocated to each SBU. All SBUs and BUs are responsible for their own profits. By coordinating our SBUs and BEs, we create additional cost and growth synergies. In the Cooperative Retailing sector, over and above the Migros Cooperatives, coordination is managed by the Retail Committee (RC), on which the head of each Cooperative is represented.

Our leadership

The substance and implementation of our strategies have been, and still are, essentially shaped by our executive staff. The basis of our managerial function is the normative framework of our Migros Group strategy:

• exemplification of our common values
• orientation of our actions to the benefit pledge to our stakeholders
• striving to achieve our vision «Migros – a better life every day»
• commitment to the common goals – the primary duty of our executive staff

We promote executives who successfully manage their businesses with a high degree of entrepreneurial self-reliance, and to the benefit of the whole. The prerequisite for any career within the Migros Group is the exemplification and promotion of our common values, and also thinking and acting within the concept of the Group.

To ensure that we have sufficient executives with the above qualifications available for the organisation, we operate a systematic, inter-business-unit executive development programme.

To strengthen our group identity and culture, we encourage the exchange of executive staff between the different business units.