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.