Marketing research and competitive intelligence for Kudler Fine Foods strategy

¶ … Kudler Fine Foods and the significance of marketing research as it applies to its strategies and tactics. The paper as well tries to find out areas where extra market research is required. Finally, the discussion covers the significance of competitive intelligence and analysis in taking into consideration development of Kudler Fine Foods.

Kudler Fine Food

The description of Kudler Fine Foods shows local upscale particularly foods kept in San Diego as well as California. The company comprise of three locations which include La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas. Every store contains around 16,000 square feet of retail space situated in fashionable shopping center. The stocking of the stores are done with the very best foods whether domestic or imported. Everything is stocked which carries upscale fresh meats and seafood, baked goods, deli, produce, and dairy departments. Kathy Kudler who is the owner started the initial three stores in 1998. Kathy opened a second store in 2000 while in 2003 a third store was opened (Kudler Virtual Organization, 2006).

Marketing objective

A significant growth has been realized by Kudler Fine Foods and its intention is to develop its services, increase the efficiency of operations, and rise the consumer purchase cycle. The final objective is to add loyalty and profitability of the customer of every shopping visit. In order to achieve these objectives, the Kudler marketing department has established three marketing plans that will better the sales and profits including reduced costs. Kudler intends to raise revenue in every store by organizing parties to demonstrate to the people on the ways of organizing specialty foods. In order to raise participation of customers at these parties, the customers will be given a chance to enter into a contest that provides them to win high-ticket prizes (Kudler Virtual Organization, 2006).

Introduce Frequent Shopping Program: Kudler makes sure that customer shopping trips is supported and obtain improved loyalty through introduction of a loyalty points program. Due to this marketing initiative, the customer's buying habits are tracked and this gives Kudler opportunity to target particular customers. Checking the recent information technologies databases, one realizes that Kudler foods contain a system that tracks internal sales data, even though there is need to improve the system therefore they may track the buying trend and demographic information of every customer (Kudler Virtual Organization, 2006). Though, when read, one may be a bit skeptical having feeling that it is an invasion of somebody's privacy.

Improve Service: The decision of Kudler Fine Foods is to employ Nordstrom's Department Stores as a benchmark. Gomez-Mejia, L., & Balkin, D. (2005). In order for this initiative to be supported, management tries to develop training programs and software that will assist the required employees' customer service training. On studying the present capital budget and information systems technology budget of the company, $91,715 belonging to the company will be spent on new software licenses to advance training (Kudler Virtual Organization, 2005). On top of that the company has to budget $45,000 for a new customer relationship management system or CRM.

Significance of Marketing Research

During the coming12 months, Kudler Fine Foods intends to enhance their customer loyalty through providing additional high-margin services, leveraging the good understanding of their customers' patterns of purchase, and offering added competent operations. This is to be achieved through their suppliers of their food and beverages. When they practice partnering and purchasing larger quantities for bigger discounts, the solution to success of Kudler will be about establishing a long-term, profitable consumer base. Consumers who are loyal are always highly profitable because of their regular visits and are repeatedly insulated from the competitors marketing efforts.

Strategies and Tactics

At the time of developing strategies and tactics, it is essential to develop an IMC. In order to develop an IMC plan, the company should be certain that every marketing initiative align with the mission statement of the company. If they are selling gourmet foods, it is highly essential to be in possession of the highest customer service and quality foods than having prices which are low. The focus of the Kudler should remain on this aspect at every time during the time of developing new tactic and strategies as not to surrender to the pressures from the discount shopper.

Psychographic and Demographic Information: The information from both the psychographic and demographic information will be utilized to form the marketing strategies for Kudler Fine foods. The operation of demographics measures the characteristics of households or persons like sex, income of the family, age or place of residence. Individuals who are sure of these characteristics in common are categorized. The work of Psychographics is to measure beliefs, attitudes, and lifestyle characteristics. They should be used while linking with demographics and not in separate. The demographics and psychographics are vital to the achievement of an IMC Campaign.

Competitive Intelligence and Analysis

Most of the information will originate from a diversity of source, which can be inside the organization and outside to it. The operations of the sales representatives with the customers are on daily basis with customers and will be in a position to hear whatever the competitors have been doing. They are perceived to be the business foot soldiers having the ear to the ground for they are capable to forewarn management concerning imminent campaigns of the enemy. New patent might be found out by the research & development. Purchasing might realize that a supplier is at the same time supplying a competitor. Market research is capable of giving response on the perspective of the customer. Some information can as well be accessed through the Internet itself and several companies are nowadays advertising their services and a section focus in providing information which could be in use for competitor research. Some of the most excellent are Dunn & Bradstreet D&B. We have many other web-sources -- protest group discussion forums, customer and governmental sites, web-logs (blogs) and many others. One is capable of getting information from trade shows and conferences, your competitors' customers and suppliers, through interviewing industry experts, ex-competitor employees or can be even the competitor however ethical matters involved exists at the time of acquiring information from a number of these sources.

From Information to Intelligence

After searching the Internet and having talked to the sales force, suppliers as well as customers, a large pile of data concerning your competitors should exist. Though a large amount of this may be out dated, repetitious, wrong or inaccurate, incomplete or misleading. This is where information begins to become intelligence.

Communicating the Intelligence