A potential opportunity that they could explore is to utilize self-checkout terminals in their locations. Self-checkout point of sale terminals could do many things to improve Kudler Fine Foods as a retail competitor. First, it would improve their customer service as many customers prefer to check themselves out rather than having a cashier. In today’s technology environment, “…systems can be tailored to better fit any retail environment and are more focused on improving customer service rather than cutting labor costs” (Murphey, 2009, p. 1) . Even though the prime focus of these systems is not necessarily to cut labor costs, often times they can improve efficiency.
When a consumer is purchasing a product they want to make sure they obtain maximum value for the money they spend and obtain a product that they perceive is greater than any other product in the market. Consumers look for something that sets a product apart from the rest wether that is providing a product at a lower price or by providing a higher quality product, ultimately a consumer will purchase the product with the greater perceived competitive advantage. Bunning’s warehouse is a company that gains its competitive advantage over the competition by offering the consumers products at lower prices than their competitors. Bunnings makes the promise of low prices through their slogan “Lowest prices are just the beginning.” The company does not just make an empty promise on providing the lowest prices but is able to back it up by saying “If you happen to find a cheaper price on a stocked item we will beat it by 10%.” (Bunnings Warehouse, Year Unknown) By creating and delivering the promise of lowest prices, Bunnings is able to position itself in the customers mind as providing superior value and as such has been able to gain majority share hold of the market through differentiating themselves from the competing companies through a competitive advantage. (Armstrong, Adam, Denize and Kotler, 2012) It is made clear through the example of
Starbucks gave US the “Café life” which didn’t existed before. Starbucks has changed our tastes, our lifestyles and penetrated in us by becoming part of the popular culture. Starbucks covers a broad base of customers from urban professionals to clerical assistances; Starbucks has found a way to appeal everyone despite of its high prices. Starbucks broad “strategy” is to grow into a global empire and any new change is done with great care and planning. Growth strategies are made to exploit customer connection.
This permits Canadians to choose a more efficient and effective mode, because they have more money to spend, therefore more options to choose from than Clearfield. For the first problem which is the high inventory levels, I think the problem is the provider of the transit service. We should consider changing the provider, because the capability of providing the service is not good. So, we should investigate which provider has a better reliability and capability for the company to have a lower transit time, therefore improve their inventory levels, and lowering the cost of holding too much inventory. For the second one, that is the transportation cost we should consider
Boots have to make sure that they are able to meet customer expectations P4 - Identify the competitive factors in the retail environment a selected organization faces Bargaining power of buyers: Customers are powerful potential buyers as they can switch easily and doesn’t cost them much as they have stores in easy locations. However supermarkets will have to reduce prices in order to attract customers. There are a lot of small sellers and few large buyers as the buyers buy in large quantities which show that they are powerful. A single buyer is a large customer to a firm as they buy more. Buyers purchase from multiple sellers at once, such as customer stores.
As known that Costco is focusing on high quality of merchandises at relatively low prices, they have one condition in order to purchase merchandises at low prices, which is number of purchases. For example, to have one product that is cheaper than competitors they have to purchase more from original manufacturers. Therefore, Costco realized that they have to keep the sales volume to be high so they are still able to maintain this advantage. Because of this, they try to keep their slogan in customer minds that Costco has lower prices and they try to same membership money. However, there is a problem that Costco has to deal with is that their profits mostly from its membership fees instead its net income.
Price: The company priced its product differently on customer base. In spite of high margin on most of its products, it emphasized on competitive pricing of those products that would attract high-volume customer traffic. Place: Most of Southland convenient stores were located in residential neighborhoods, providing easy access to customers. Promotion: The company focused on promoting high-margin, fast-food products and had made big names in different product categories. Furthermore, in terms of business stream, Southland vertically integrated into businesses to ensure a favorable pricing and qualified products.
Whole Foods knows that quality is their biggest responsibility to their customers, they realize that in order to ensure product quality they must be able to trace the quality all the way back to their sources; providing suppliers with product profiles and testing the suppliers’ ability to meet their quality goals. Whole Foods encourages decisions to be made at regional levels due to the fact that they understand the needs of local shoppers better than the other levels within the business. Trader Joe’s although doesn’t mention quality as a core value it still means something to the corporation. Trader Joe’s has their own approach to ensuring their customers product quality, 80% of products that Trader Joe’s offers are private label which is five times more than the typical grocery stores have to offer their customers this allows Trader Joe’s can focus on developing customer loyalty to their own brand. Whole Foods mission statement needs any improvement this is because the current mission statement is structured in a way that allows for their mission statement to be clear and concise.
It has been rapidly growing and opens about two branches a day on average. They have been know to serve their customers with their high-quality hot and cold beverages which are mostly coffee based. Howard Schultz, one of the main builders of starbucks, envisioned the brand to become the most respected name in the coffee industry and to be commended by their corporate duties. Starbucks company's mission is to awaken the human spirit with a cup of coffee at a time. They are to maintain providing high-quality searching for the finest coffee beans, brewing the first-class coffees, and contributing improvement on their communities and to the environment.
Consumers also are extremely loyal to their brand and package size and for other products like chocolate bars they may have several brands that they alternatively use. So, they would only crave for the brands they want instead of just grab anything they see. The Smart Trolley allows these types of customers to keep track of the items they are finding for with faster. They do not have to move row by row, here and there just to find one product. They can easily type it on the map and search, the way the GPS operated.