Kudler Fine Foods - Marketing Research

Kudler Fine Foods-Marketing Research

Kudler Fine Foods is an upscale specialty food store located San Diego, California. The owner Kathy Kudler opened the first store in 1998; within the year the store was at the break-even point. The company quickly became successful and two additional stores were opened in nearby cities. As with any company to become profitable and successful Kudler Fine Foods must conduct extensive and comprehensive marketing research that includes; the development of a marketing strategy, a useful competitive edge and analysis as well as other marketing tactics to capitalize on future opportunities and achieve the goals set forth for the company (Kudler Fine Foods Portal, 2008).

The most realistic way for Kudler Fine Foods to continue its course and to reach the goals of improving efficiency, an expansion of services and increase consumer purchases while it and maintains its successes is to invest in appropriate marketing research.

According to the Journal of Marketing Research" (2011), marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information. The information is then used to identify the problems, marketing opportunity, and understanding the marketing process. This marketing data and information is analyzed to assist in the process of making business decisions (Kerin, Hartley, & Berkowitz, 2009). Kudler Foods understands marketing research is essential and is an important tool and when executed property will deliver rewarding benefits to the company. Kudler Fine Foods has plans to increase customer loyalty, and improve its profitability through a series of marketing strategies and sales options. A number of customer service programs focused on the shoppers experience will be released such as frequent shopper plans, direct mail programs, and other cost cutting initiatives. By improving the customer value chain this creates continued loyalty and increases product sales. To effectively add value to the customer satisfaction Kudler has to identify any marketing problems with research gathering to properly upgrade current services and expand into other areas like; catering and an organic food product line. Since Kudler experienced tremendous successes early on in the business it may have miss several key steps in the marketing process, meaning that a well organized marketing strategy was not originally put forth to monitor mile stones and capture missteps. Going forward Kudler must be proactive in scrutinizing actions to have a good understanding of the results (Kudler Fine Foods Portal, 2008).

One way to establish a catering service is for Kudler to devise the right marketing mix that is a combination of existing services with new and improved services to attack and satisfy the target market. While establishing the target market Kudler is tapping into the four P's of marketing: product, price, promotion and place all of which are necessary elements in developing an effective marketing mix. The owner, Ms. Kudler catered events the accommodate what the customer most want; a good product, a rate/price that is comparable to other like services, promotion of services via in-store notices, direct mail, word of mouth. To that end, Kudler introduced an automated inventory system for ordering to help with operations. The addition of the inventory system the website should be upgraded as well to incorporate

E-commerce capacity. When people visit the website they can find out all of Kudler's fine food options and new services information. With these improved and new systems Kudler can also develop or further hold in the store cooking classes and provide easy access for customers to purchase products and services from the company. However any issues related