Kudler Fine Foods is a specialty food store operating in San Diego in three main locations. The 16000 square foot stores are located in shopping centers and offer a variety of high quality imported foodstuffs. The food products offered are categorized into the following: fresh produce, fresh bakery and pastries, fresh meat and seafood, condiments and packed foods, as well as cheese and specialty dairy products.
Market needs
The company was started after the founder realized that there existed an opportunity for an upscale food shop in La Jolla. The success at La Jolla prompted expansions to other locations. The most important element is the fact that the store was opened to satisfy the need, as realized by Kathy, the founder during her travel. The stores target the upper-income group of customers hence the choice of affluent locations. The stores clearly target the top income earners and offer high-quality foods, expensive but acceptable to this group of people (Kotler & Keller, 2007, p127).
Market growth
Market growth is critical for the success of any business. After the first store was opened in 1998, two other stores were opened in the years 2000 and 2003 in two other locations. The company banked on its ability to offer high-quality foods as well as immense diversification efforts to build on its market hence expand. The store managed to leverage its strong brand in its growth strategy. Consequently, the store has seen immense growth and has been able to expand the product lines successfully.
SWOT Analysis
An analysis of the stores operations exhibits a number of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and Threats. The most visible strengths lie in several areas. First is the store’s strong brand name, which is as a result of its ability to continually offer high-quality foodstuff. Secondly, the store has a host of cost-cutting and efficiency-boosting measures that help improve performance. There is a standard purchasing procedure to guide the store managers in undertaking the purchase. The stores also have an elaborate advertising campaign in place.
Advertising is highly effective in influencing customer behavior towards the purchase of the advertised products. Again the store has put in place point of sale cash registers to record all the relevant accounting information. In addition, there is elaborate inventory management, which not only ensures customer satisfaction but also maintains holding and storage costs low. These are internal strengths that offer a competitive advantage to the stores. Again the store has adopted strong marketing activities through a combination of several media and has a strong growth strategy (Kotler & Keller, 2007, p137).
The store identifies strong opportunities in processes that leverage on understanding customer purchase patterns as well as efficient operations to build on profitability.
The most important threat is competition from other high-class food offerings stores. However, the business has been able to establish strong points of difference from the competitors. The store not only offers high-quality products but a host of other services that serve to enhance its position as a dominant player in areas concerning quality preparation of food. Again the company wishes to build on establishing customer loyalty and hence enhance its position as a leader in high-quality foodstuff.
Competition
As has been mentioned above, the competition is definite for the firm. However, the store is well able to take advantage of the experience in the industry. The fact that there are elaborate strategies for growth and expansions will help the store wade off much of the competition from other foodstuff stores.
Reference List
Kotler, P., & Keller, K., (2007). A Framework for Marketing Management. Prentice Hall, Inc. A Pearson Education Company.