Trader Joe’s owns 344 food stores in throughout the United States, and is strong example of how to gain the competitive advantage in a large market by embracing their unique approach. In 1967 Trader Joe’s opened their very first store in Southern California. [4] They had started as a convenience store chain called Pronto Markets back in 1958. In 1967 the original founder changed the company’s name to “Trader Joe’s” and opened its doors for the very first time in Pasadena, California. The company holds the upmost pride in the way they service their customers, as well as how they’ve always worked on bringing unusual goods to their wide variety of different customers.
The store began its journey in the United States Supermarket arena as a collection of small convenience stores in the year 1950. It has now evolved into a huge conglomerate in the Supermarket industry specializing in food grocery. While the store’s history dates back to 1950, the actual name of the store that is Trader Joe’s, was given in the year 1967, to a store opened in California. This store had quite a few collections on liquor (mostly wine) along with cheese and nuts. The store is well known for its own brand of food items which has the consumer addicted to it.
TRADER JOE’S – INDUVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1 Part 1 – Introduction What Joe Coulombe did was opening an ordinary supermarket into the industry but the strategies he took were separating the Trader Joe’s from its rivals. What he did was to offer products targeting sophisticated costumers who were searching for good bargains. The offerings of Trader Joe’s were so unique which are not found at rival shelfs. Another crucial decision he made was to take advantage of recent environmental movements such as the rising trend of costumers searching organic foods. The company also decided on selling private labelled products with lower prices than other brands of the same product.
Focusing on the needs of the buyer is also a focus of the firm, they can create products that specifically cater to the needs of their customers. This can be seen when the begin rotating season goods for their customers or bringing in more natural foods due to trends involving customer fitness and eating healthier foods. This strategy is appropriate, this was the firm’s original strategy when it was founded in the late 60s, and it hasn’t changed all that much. The corporate-level strategy resembles that of an organic growth strategy. Rather than opting for an external approach and follow say an Amazon by acquiring Whole Foods to enter the business, Trader Joe’s has followed an internal approach for their corporate-level strategy.
Trader Joe’s is a small, American grocery store chain that would benefit from expanding internationally into the Canadian market. As we have seen in recent months, Target Corp. just pulled all of their locations out of Canada, but this is largely due to the fact that their international strategy did not fit well with the Canadian market. This paper will outline why Trader Joe’s is a good retailer for international expansion, why Canada mixes well with their business strategy as a country to expand to, the strategic plan Trader Joes should engage in during expansion, and five strategic recommendations that lead to Trader Joe’s advantages in
Most of the food sold in stores are brand indifferent, meaning that customers care about the product, not the brand name. Think of milk, eggs, meat. Nobody asks for a certain type of milk, they just want milk. Any large grocery store chain which does not have in-house product of basic food items is operating inefficiently. Compare Trader Joe's to other large grocery store chains such as Ralphs or Vons, they do not have any in-house products.
First looking at Trader Joe’s promotional strategy, it is unique and different. The company approaches this strategy very different their other grocers. It is very uncommon you will see Trader Joe’s television commercials or billboards, this believes the best way to promote is word-of-mouth. Trader Joe’s wants the consumer to experience something special when entering their store and they think the best way to pass that experience along is for the consumer to tell their story. The story is more personal coming from a person than being shown on a television commercial.
Trader Joe’s uses a culture framework. They focus on making their business unique, bringing something new to the table with products, and care about value. After incorporating all of this, Trade Joe’s wanted to make their concepts difficult to imitate. To imitate, a company would have to reduce costs, and be able to negotiate well with a supplier for cheaper products. This would allow a company to reduce costs, making it cheaper for consumers.
Key Competitors Some of the competitors CVS is up against would be the medical/nursing industry and businesses like Walgreens and Rite Aid. When I mention the medical/nursing industry, this is a key competitor because the medical industry, such as PharMerica, is a corporation that provides services to healthcare facilities (hospitals), provide specialty infusion services to patients outside of the hospital, and offers the only national oncology pharmacy in the U.S. Then you think about the businesses like Walgreens and Rite Aid provide the same type of services CVS provides. However, I think Walgreens would be more a competitor because you don’t see a lot of Rite Aids still open.
Trader Joe’s Case Analysis Introduction This case analysis studies the Trader Joe’s retail chain that operates in the U.S domestic market. It identifies the current competitive strategies being employed by the company, the key issues it faces and proposes a number of improvements that are considered useful for the growth of the company in the future. Trader Joe’s is a privately held company that was founded in 1967 by Joe’s Coulombe and it is presently owned by the Albrecht family trust. Since its establishment, the Company carries out its business using the concept of Fresh & Easy Stores and targets the overeducated and poorly paid customers, who were believed to be sophisticated and interested in finding good bargains (Ager & Roberto,
Almost everyone has heard of the membership warehouse retailer, Costco Wholesale, whether or not you actually choose to shop there. You can find one of their warehouses in over 400 locations around the United States, as well as an additional 200 warehouses in Canada, Mexico, Australia, the United Kingdom, and parts of Asia. Although they are not quite as instantly recognizable as their main competitor, Sam’s Club of Wal-Mart Inc., Costco has attracted somewhat of a cult following due to their unusual business operations. In many financial comparisons, Costco seems to beat out all of their industry competitors. Even in the recent economic downtown, Costco still posted growth in their stock, as well as higher than industry average profits.
Trader Joe’s is known for their excellent in customer service as the company statement is “We tried it. We like it. If you don’t, bring it back for a refund or exchange — no hassles” (Anderson, Swaminathan and Mehta, 2013). In addition, unlike any other department stores where they have approximate 40,000 of products in stock, Trade Joe’s only carries about 4,000 products to serve “the demographic and psychographic profiles of its customers” (Anderson, Swaminathan and Mehta, 2013). Therefore, rather than focusing on a large consumer area, Trader Joe’s cares about the local consumers who have the easier and more frequent access to the store.
Another company is Sysco, a food-service distributor in the U.S. Porter demonstrates that “It led the move to introduce private-label distributor brands with specifications tailored to the food-service market, moderating supplier power. Sysco emphasized value-added services to buyers such as credit, menu planting, and inventory management to shift” (Porter, 2008, p. 90). Like Paccar, Sysco knows how to make them different from their competitors in the high competitive industry. In food industry, customers is very sensitive with price because they have many options for substitute, so companies must have a competitive prices. However, Sysco decides that they should add values to their products and improve connection with their suppliers.
Competition is coming at them in many directions from many multinational sources. Everyone wants their product on the shelf at supermarkets. Maintaining customer loyalty and good relationships with retailers has been tough due to the competitiveness of other brands. The leadership staff at Frito-Lay
Specifically, Ralph’s (similar stores are Vons and Albertson’s) and Whole Foods (similar stores are Gelson’s and Trader Joes) are two firms that utilize cost leadership and differentiation. On one hand, we have Ralph’s using cost differentiation by providing a broad range of merchandise at a decent price. On the other hand, we have Whole Foods that has implemented a differentiation strategy by marketing their merchandise as healthier (organic). The trade of for both companies is that they are attracting less consumers by just marketing to a specific crowed. For instance, if Whole Foods had lowered their price and still sold premium merchandise, soon Ralph’s would be in trouble.
