Introduction
Marketing is one of the most important tools for business. In this era of consumerism most of the products vie with each other to grab the attention of the customers. Marketing is the basic avenue of reaching for a company to reach customers. Marketing creates an awareness of the product, educates the consumers about the benefits and anticipates the future changes required to provide a better product to the customers. Marketing is the very process of making anticipation about the demands, services and ideas for the products and making efforts to fulfill them (Ash, 2011). Good companies always create great marketing strategy for their products. Great marketing strategy can make a successful product launch and product demand. Success of a marketing strategy depends on many factors and the most important of them all is marketing research. Marketing research is the cornerstone of a marketing strategy. Marketing research helps figure out customer requirements, the product characteristics customers want, where to place the product in the market and how much customers are willing to pay for making the purchase. Without doing market research a company cannot even begin to develop a product. This essay will discuss the importance of marketing research for Kudler and the measures to be taken to improve its marketing strategy.
About Kudler
Kudler is a gourmet food retail company. Miss Kudler who is a proprietor of the company saw an increased need for gourmet food ingredients and that inspired her to start this business. It started its operation in La Jolla, California in 1998. At present it operates in two other cities in California successfully (Kudler Fine Foods). Kudler is now planning to expand its operation in some more cities but before that it wants to understand its customer base in a better way to decide upon the appropriate location for opening its next store.
Kudler’s Strategy
Kudler operates in a niche market that requires a good marketing strategy to survive among the competitors. Kudler uses visual marketing strategy both offline and online. Kudler sticks eye-catching posters of its products all across the cities of its operation to give a visual appeal to the customers with pictures of appetizing foods and the gourmet ingredients. It uses the same visual technique in its online portal as well to draw customers’ attention. As most of the food lovers feast on foods first with their eyes, this technique of visual appeal is very useful for making a mark on the customers. The luscious and tantalizing visual images of gourmet foods make the marketing campaign so believable that many customers feel tickled by the visual temptation to feel like actually having the foods. The details about the products and places where the products are sold are also mentioned in the marketing campaign. The illustrative pictorial marketing campaign makes it easier for the company to sell its seafood, cheese, meats, produce and wines easily.
Current Marketing Research
Kudler needs to constantly monitor its customer needs to create an effective marketing strategy. One of the marketing research technique used is the customer feedback in its stores and online. Kudler uses this technique to get valuable inputs from its consumers. It uses a one minute survey form for the customers. This gives valuable input to Kudler about the shopping experience of its customers both online and in stores. This helps Kudler get an idea about the changes required for improvement and the weaknesses of its offerings.
Additional Areas of Market Research
Kudler has a lot of areas in which it can extend its market research. Already in its website it uses a particular strategy of making the customers answer one or two questions related to the products and the overall shopping experience when the customers check out upon making a purchase. This helps Kudler gather information about whether or not customers are able to find out every product they were looking for in its online portal. Apart from this strategy, Kudler can think of making use of other marketing research strategy such as asking customers for suggestions as to what kind of product bundles it can offer so that the customers need not rummage through the whole website to find out two or more products they are planning to buy. Kudler can also start taking feedback from consumers relative to their opinion about organic vs. inorganic food. In this way Kudler will be able to know if it needs to keep more fresh organic vegetables and dairy products than inorganic products.
Apart from its in-store marketing research needs, Kudler can go out in the market to do some market research about the competition. Kudler first of all can use the market research to identify who are its main competitors. Kudler can easily get the information through an open market research or it can find it from the customers by asking them about the alternative stores they visit for similar kind of products. Kudler can also use secondary market research report to find out which consumer segment is showing more interest in gourmet foods and which area is showing more demand for gourmet food (McGonagle, 2009). This information will help Kudler focus its marketing plan to the proper consumer segment.
Conclusion
Kudler uses a good marketing strategy to attract customers. However, gourmet food is a highly competitive market and with only three stores to its credit without proper marketing campaign Kudler may easily get lost in the gourmet food market. It needs to conduct its marketing campaign dedicated to a customer base interested in gourmet food. However, among the whole population only a very few percentage of people are actually interested in this type of products. A general campaign will cost huge money for the company and still may not reach out to the right customers. On the other hand before embarking on a marketing campaign if Kudler invests some money doing a fruitful market research, it will be beneficial in many ways. Kudler will get information about which customers to target, which area to expand its new store or which products to keep in its existing shops. Spending some money in the marketing research will help Kudler devise a marketing strategy that will be beneficial for the future success of the company.
References
Ash, T. (2011). Why marketing is important to your business. Retrieved on 17th August 2013 from < from http://www.articlesbase.com/viral-marketing-articles/why-marketing-is-important-to-your-business-410123.html>
McGonagle, J. (2009). An overview of competitive intelligence. Retrieved on 17th August 2013 from <http://www.combsinc.com/chapt1.htm>
About Kudler. Kudler Fine Foods. Retrieved on 17th August 2013 from <http://kudlerfinefoods.info/about-kudler/>
