Kroger Retail Strategy: Customers, Innovation & Relationships
This paper examines Kroger's retail strategy across several dimensions: its strategic planning and customer relationship-building initiatives, including the Kroger Pickup platform and the Kroger Plus Card loyalty program; three recommended actions to enhance customer relationships; the company's ownership structure; nontraditional retailing approaches such as online shopping and driverless delivery; target consumer segments; and the five-step consumer buying process as applied to Kroger shoppers. Drawing on marketing research and Kroger's investor relations data, the paper evaluates how Kroger has positioned itself competitively in the grocery retail market and where opportunities for further growth and consumer engagement remain.
- Strategic Planning and Building Relationships: Kroger's foresight in online ordering and loyalty programs
- Three Actions to Enhance Customer Relationships: Mask policy, delivery service, and organic food recommendations
- Characteristics of Ownership: Kroger's public ownership and institutional shareholder structure
- Nontraditional Forms of Retailing: Online shopping, driverless delivery, and farmer's market concepts
- Target Consumer and Buying Process: Shopper segments and the five-step consumer decision process
- Conclusion: Summary of Kroger's strategy strengths and policy concerns
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What makes this paper effective
- It applies concrete retail marketing frameworks—such as the five-step consumer buying process and smart shopper segmentation—directly to a real company, grounding theory in practice.
- Each section addresses a distinct analytical lens (strategy, ownership, consumer behavior), giving the paper clear organizational logic and preventing overlap between topics.
- The paper uses specific product examples (Kroger Pickup, Kroger Plus Card, Simple Truth) to support broader strategic claims, making the analysis tangible rather than abstract.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied business analysis: the student takes established marketing concepts (buying process stages, shopper segmentation types, stakeholder theory) from cited academic sources and maps them systematically onto a single company case. This technique shows how theoretical frameworks translate into practical business evaluation.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an overview of Kroger's strategic planning strengths, then moves to prescriptive recommendations for improving customer relationships. It shifts to a factual section on ownership before examining nontraditional retailing innovations. The penultimate section covers target consumers and the full five-step buying process. A short conclusion synthesizes the findings. The structure moves from descriptive analysis to prescriptive recommendations and back to synthesis.
Strategic Planning and Building Relationships
Kroger is one of the most successful large retailers when it comes to strategic planning and building customer relationships. The company has consistently demonstrated a willingness to adapt to meet the needs of consumers in a changing environment. Kroger Pickup — its online ordering service — allows customers to shop virtually and then collect their items without ever having to leave their car. Its Kroger Plus Card is another example of relationship building: it allows loyal customers to earn fuel points on purchases and save on select items.
The strategic planning required for online ordering was something Kroger had to begin developing years in advance, given the significant front-end and back-end work involved in building the necessary computer applications. That preparation paid off considerably when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in 2020 and many shoppers turned to Kroger's online ordering platform to obtain groceries without risking in-store exposure to COVID-19. Had Kroger been less forward-thinking, the platform would not have been designed, developed, and ready to deploy. Instead, Kroger anticipated that online ordering was the way of the future and took the necessary steps to deliver that capability to customers. Its loyalty program has further strengthened customer relationships by enabling shoppers to earn fuel points redeemable at Kroger gas stations. In these ways, Kroger has built lasting relationships with customers and demonstrated a clear capacity for future-oriented planning.
Works Cited
Atkins, Kelly Green, Archana Kumar, and Youn-Kyung Kim. "Smart grocery shopper segments." Journal of International Consumer Marketing 28.1 (2016): 42–53.
Conlin, Ronald, and Alice Labban. "Clustering attitudes and behaviors of high/low involvement grocery shoppers." Journal of Food Products Marketing 25.6 (2019): 647–667.
Kroger IR. "Ownership."
Wagner, Laura, Catarina Pinto, and Pedro Amorim. "On the Value of Subscription Models for Online Grocery Retail." European Journal of Operational Research (2020).
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