Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

The definition of market is people or organizations with needs or wants and the ability and willingness to buy. And the market segmentation plays an important role in marketing products to meet the needs of particular population segments. There are several types of consumers’ market segmentations: geographic, demographic, psychographic, benefit, and usage-rate segmentation. For Whole Foods Market, it mainly focuses on the benefit segmentation. As we all know that, Whole Foods Market is the leading market that selling natural and organic foods. Organic food has become the mantra of consumers who are aware of the dangers of pesticides, chemicals and hormones used in the growing and processing practices of the commercial food industry. Moreover, people are more and more concerned about the calories and nutrition that they take from their meal. Whole foods market mentions that this grouping of customers seeks the healthy benefits from eating these natural and organic foods. For instance, whole foods market produces the low fat foods regarding the situation that people are facing the problem of obesity. People pursue low dat diets for many reasons, including weight loss and disease prevention. Typically, the American diet derives 34% of its calories from fat. Low fat regimens usually prescribe fat intake of 10 to 20% of calories.

For strategies for selecting target market, whole foods market chooses the concentrated targeting. Concentrated targeting strategy used to select on segment of a market for targeting marketing efforts. The main target for whole foods market is college educated people because they are awareness of the important for taking natural and organic foods. So whole foods markets are mainly locates in the place where has large population of high educated people.

Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

The term of market mix refers to a unique blend of product, place, promotion, and pricing strategies designed to produce matually satisfying exchanges with a target market. Typically, the marketing mix starts with the product p. the heart of the marketing mix, the starting point, is the product offering and product strategy.

New products are important to sustain growth, increase revenues and profits, and replace obsolete items. A new product is a product new to the world, the market, the producer, the seller, or some combination of these. And there are several steps for new products development. Firstly, the new product strategy focus and provides general guidelines for generating, screening, and evaluating new-product ideas. Secondly, idea generation is that gathering new idea about products mainly from customers, employees, distributors, competitors, vendors, research and development. Thirdly, idea screening eliminates ideas that are inconsistent with organization’s new product strategy or are obviously inappropriate for some other reason. Fourthly, business analysis figures for demand, cost, sales, and profitability are calculated.  Fifthly, development decides the product packaging, branding, labeling, and so forth. Sixthly, test marketing is the limit introduction of a product and a marketing program to determine the reaction of the potential customers in a market situation. Lastly, commercialization is the decision to market a product. A new kind of product can only be marketed well through this product process.

Ch. 16 - Integrated Marketing Communications

The role of promotion is important in the marketing mix. The ultimate goal of promotion is to get someone to buy a good or service or, in the case of nonprofit organization, to take some actions. Marketers use different strategies to achieve the promotion such as advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. Using the promotion strategies is the vital way that marketers convince the consumers about their competitive advantages. For example, whole foods markets, convinces the consumers about their competitive advantage by advertising the high quality of their organic and natural foods. There is no doubt that it makes great sense for attracting consumers who want to have a healthy diet.

Moreover, promotional strategy is closely related to the process of communication. Communication is the process by which meanings are exchanged or shared through a common set of symbols. There are two types of the communication: interpersonal communication and mass communication. Whole foods market does well in the communication with customers. For the interpersonal communication, Whole foods market thinks highly of the personal selling. Employees can explain the new production to their customers face-to- face which is vital for customer to understand their productions well. A competitive advantage can sometimes be created by personal selling, or based on the extend and diversity of channels of distribution. Because the most important advantage is that personal selling is considerably more effective than other forms of promotion in obtaining a sale and gaining a satisfied customers. For the mass communication, the whole foods market also invest great amount of money on the advertising.

Furthermore, the AIDA concept is important for marketer to attain the promotional goals. Firstly, the attention, marketers must gain it from their target market. They need use different strategies to attract customers’ attention such as advertising so that people will know the existing of the products. Secondly, interest, simple awareness of a brand seldom leads to a sale. Thirdly, desire, finding what customers’ needs is the effective way for promotion. Lastly, action, motivating potential customers to take action to buy their products is the other important key.

Ch. 10 - Product Concepts

The term marketing mix refers to a unique blend of product, place, promotion, and pricing strategies designed to produce mutually satisfying exchanged with a target market. The heart of the marketing mix, the starting point, is the product offering and product offering and product strategy.

Product may be tangible good or services. For Whole foods market, product sold in the market is tangible goods. There are different types of consumer product such as convenience products, shopping products, specialty products, and unsought products. The products in Whole Foods Market are convenience products because they are relatively inexpensive item that merit little shopping effort. People buy products such as foods and flowers in Whole Foods Market everyday without much planning.

Whole Foods Market sells variety kinds of product. In order to organize the product item well and make convenient for customers shopping in the market, Whole Foods Market uses the product line to classify products. For product mix width, the numbers of product lines in Whole Foods Market are organic vegetable, fruit, body care, and supplements. For product line depth, Whole Foods Market also provides different product items in products line. For example, the products in body care line in Whole Foods Market are lotion, shampoo, conditioner, and soap.

Branding is the vital tool marketer use to distinguish their product form the other competitors. For Whole Foods Market, they use the family brand because they market several products under the same brand name- Whole Foods. For example, Whole Foods Market markets bread, yogurt and beverage under the same brand – Whole Foods Market.

Moreover, Whole Foods Market also cares much about the package. As marketers, package makes an important role in the process of selling. Beautiful package is no doubt can attract more customers’ attention.  Whole Foods Market expands green packaging, beging with private lable. Whole foods markey has implementes new responsible packaging guidelines for its 2100 body care and supplements suppliers, and is leading the charge toward change by switching to post-consumer recycled content bottles for several of its store brand supplemnets and body care products.

Ch. 18 - Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Sales promotion is marketing communication activity that motivates consumers purchasing a good pr service within a short-term. And sales promotion is usually targeted toward either of two distinctly different marketers. Whole foods market does use different tools for consumer sales promotion.

Coupon is an effective tool to promote the selling. A coupon is a certificate that entitles consumers to an immediate price reduction when they buy the product. Whole foods market provides several special coupons on their official website; consumers can print out the coupon and get price deduction when they use them. There are supplement coupon, cleanser coupon, and foods coupon which is no surprise that they would satisfy different customers need and attract more customers.  Moreover, Whole foods market also uses the sampling to attract more customers. Sampling allows the customers to try a product risk free. When we go in to Whole foods market, there are usually several sampling displayed in whole foods retail stores for customers to try their production. I can directly say that sampling is a really excellent way to promote consumer purchasing. I have that experience that when I try the sampling in Whole foods market such as snacks that really incentives me to buy that production if I like that taste.

For personal selling, Whole foods market realize that personal selling is as whole food employees. For some types of productions, personal selling is a critical tool especially for some new productions. Employees can explain the new production to their customers which is vital for customer to understand their productions well. A competitive advantage can sometimes be created by personal selling, or based on the extend and diversity of channels of distribution. Because the most important advantage is that personal selling is considerably more effective than other forms of promotion in obtaining a sale and gaining a satisfied customers.

                                       

Ch. 17 - Advertising

As the marketing competition becomes more and more fiercely, advertising becomes more and more important for companies to maintain brand awareness and market share. Whole foods market is leading market for selling natural and organic foods. Because of the high quality of these foods, their prices are also higher than normal foods. Many people do not realize the benefit from eating these organic foods so they prefer to spend less money on the normal foods. And the target market is just limited in educational college residences. However, Whole Foods Market realizes the advertising is a good way to improve people the awareness of the benefits from eating organic and natural foods.

Moreover, Whole Foods Market is also focusing on the product advertising. The product advertising promotes the benefit of a special goods and service. In the Whole Foods Website, it has the advertisement shows that the 365 everyday product. It says that their product can fill customers pantry without empting their pocketbook. It also advertise that this kind of production are formulated too meet all their quality standards, come in both natural and organic selections.

Whole foods market is also focusing on the advertising strategies. Advertising strategies are typically organized around an advertising campaign. And advertising campaign is a series of related advertisements focusing on a common theme, slogan, and set of advertising appeals. As the summer time is coming, whole foods markets advertises the summer meals and outdoor meals for this special period-summer time.

                                 

 

Ch. 15 - Retailing

Whole Foods Markets are all retail store that all activities related to the sale of goods for personal use. For the retail operations, whole foods markets retail stores are classified as a chain store because the whole foods market is owned and operate by whole food markets. Under this form of ownership, many administrative tasks are handled by the home office for the entire chain. Whole foods markets have many retail stores that located in different states such New York, California, and Alabama.

For retail operation, whole foods market is defined as supermarket. Supermarkets are large, departmentalized, self-service retailers that specialized in foods and some nonfood item. Whole foods markets mainly sell organic and natural foods. The characteristics of supermarkets are low level of service, broad of product assortment, moderate price, and low gross margin.

Whole foods market also use retail marketing strategy to make great profit such as m-commerce. Whole foods market mobile website is eCommerce Enable ans allowes to search, browes and order products using their smart phones. Customers are getting comfortable with mobile commerce-brands needs to keep up.