Kudler Fine Foods - Research Paper Example

Kudler Fine Foods Kudler Fine Foods is a local gourmet food store situated in San Diego. It was established in 1998 by the owner named Kathy Kudler. Currently, the food store has three locations: Dar Mar, La Jolla and Encinitas. The stores are stocked with fresh domestic as well as imported foodstuffs which are categorized into five classes: packaged foods, fresh meat and seafood, fresh bakery and pastries, fresh produce and cheese and specialty diary products. The mission of the store is to provide customers with finest foodstuffs, wines, cheeses plus other related needs ("About kudler," n.d). Over the last recent years, Kudler Fine Foods has recorded a howling growth. This can be attributed to their exemplary dedication to customers and employees, and their enduring devotion to providing goods and services of high caliber. It is withal, committed towards expanding its products with the aim of increasing its market share. Marketing is a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers (Ferrel & Hartline, 2010). Marketing research is an important component in understanding the market. According to Kerin and Hartley (2010) marketing research involves defining a marketing problem, systematic collection and analysis of data and information regarding the problem, upon which final recommendations are formulated (Kerin, & Hartley, 2010). Marketing research is a prerequisite for any organization or company that aims at increasing its market share. It ensures that, a produce or a service is targeted to the right people who need the good or the service. Thus, Kudler Fine Foods should ensure that they offer goods or services that are well targeted. Kudler Fine Foods may benefit from market research in a myriad of ways. For instance, through market research, they may enhance proper communication and understanding of customers’ needs better. This may be done through gathering information about their products and services from the customers. For instance, regular customers may be prompted to provide valuable information regarding their shopping experience at Kudler. The customers may also provide valuable information about what could make their shopping experience better. This may be done through carrying out either oral or written inquiry on a cross-section of the customers. Questions may be asked so to with the aim of knowing the customers’ opinion. Such information may be helpful in increasing customers’ satisfaction and eventually increasing sales. Consequently, Kudler Fine Foods could tremendously expand their market share. Also, through extensive market research, Kudler Fine Foods may be able to identify new opportunities. This way, they may be able to identify areas in the market that are unexploited. They may then develop new products or services. The information may eventually help them to develop marketing strategies and tactics that may help in increasing sales. Consequently, they may end up with an increased market share as new customers will be inevitable. Pricing is another strategy that could enhance increase in market share. To ensure better pricing, Kudler Fine Foods needs a better understanding of its customers, competitors, employees among many other factors. Apparently, Kudler is credited for providing products of high quality to its customers. This implicates that their prices are slightly higher as compared to that of their competitors. However, this should not pose a threat to their market share. They may still increase their market share by appealing to their customers about their high quality. This way, they are capable of building a large pool of loyal customers who would not mind the higher prices at the expense of the exceptional quality. Kudler Fine Foods should also beware of its competitors, their products and services as well as the prices they charge. To enhance their competitiveness in such an environment, Kudler Fine Foods may opt to focus more on customer needs and appropriate ways to enhance customer satisfaction. The customers’ needs may be met by offering a variety of products and services that captures individual needs of each customer. Impossible as it may seem, Kudler already has a strategy in place which offers an open menu and provides room for adjustments based on the requests of the customer ("About kudler," n.d). They are renown for their astounding flexibility. In this regards, they are willing to alter their menu at the expense of keeping their customers satisfied and coming back for more. This focus on customer satisfaction has resulted to palpable increase in Kudler’s market share. Product promotion is another strategy for increasing market share. It helps in communicating messages to possible customers and creating awareness about a given good or service in the market (Armstrong & Kotler, 2008). As a fact, Kudler command a large base of customers. Thus, they may use these existing customers to reach out for more. This may be done thorough ensuring that customers are unremittingly satisfied. When customers receive satisfaction from a given service or product, they not only come back one more time, but recommend about the good or service to friends and colleagues as well. Despite using existing customers to advertise them, kudler may also resort to some other forms of advertising. These include various forms of media. Here, newspapers, direct mailers, television, and internet come in handy. Proper utilization of the mentioned product promotion methods may foster the expansion of Kudler’s market share to large extents In the recent past, many companies have intensified the use of data marts and warehouse. This could be of great help to Kudler Fine Foods as well. There are various architectures that could be utilized. For instance there is the hub and spoke architecture which is also referred to as Corporate Information Factory. This was advocated by Bill Inmon. There is also the data mart bus architecture with linked dimensional data mart which was advocated by Ralph Kimball (Kimball, Ross, Thornthwaite, Mundy & Becker, 2008). Others include the independent data marts, decentralized data warehouse as well as federated data warehouse to mention but a few (Inman, 2005). With regards to Kudler Fine Foods, I would recommend the use of data Mart Bus architecture with linked dimensional data marts. This requires a critical analysis for specific business processes like sales and marketing, catering, production among others. Here, the first mart is built from a single business process using specified dimensions and measures that will be used with other marts. According to Inmon (2005), the measures and dimensions are based on conformed facts and conformed dimensions. Eventually, additional marts are built basing on these conformed dimensions. This results into logically integrated marts as well as an enterprise view of data. Consequently, atomic and summarized data are then maintained in the marts and are they organized in a star schema to present a dimensional view of data (Inmon, 2005). The integration of various data marts is done by a process known as drill across. Kudler Fine Foods is structured into various departments. The departments include but not inclined to: sales and marketing, finance, customer care, research and development, production, catering among others. With the quest of increasing their market share, Kudler Fine Foods may use data Mart Bus architecture with linked dimensional data marts by involving as many of these departments as possible. For instance, the data warehousing effort may begin in the Sales and Marketing department by building a sales and marketing sales data. Upon successful completion of sales and marketing data mart, Kulder may extend the warehousing activities into another department like catering which may come up with a catering data mart. For the sales and marketing data mart and catering data mart to be integrable, there is a requirement for them to share the same bus. In this regards, the data warehousing team has to identify and implement conformed dimension in the bus, and ensure that the individual data marts link that information form the bus (Kimball et al., 2008). Through the two data marts, the data warehouse may be able to provide specific information that could be assigned to an individual data mart. It may also provide integrated information regarding the two or more individual data marts. This integrated information is usually of critical business values. In the case of Kudler Fine Foods, the integrated information could suggest better ways of ensuring that the integrated data marts provide useful information that could be used in increasing the market share. In conclusion, with the quest to increasing its market share, Kudler Fine Foods needs an analytical market research which would provide a wide scope of data. The data may then be incorporated into data mart bus architecture with linked dimensional data marts that may help in providing integrated information to help them achieve their goal. References About kudler. (n.d). Retrieved from http://kudlerfinefoods.info/ Armstrong, G., & Kotler, P. (2008). Principles of marketing. (13 ed., pp. 89-94). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Ferrel, O. C., & Hartline, M. (2010). Marketing strategy . (5 ed., pp. 247-261). Boston: South- Western College Publishing. Inmon, H. W. (2005). Building the data warehouse. (4 ed., pp. 212-218). New Jersey: Wiley. Kerin, R., , H., & Hartley, S. (2010). Marketing. (10 ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Kimball, R., Ross, M., Thornthwaite, W., Mundy, J., & Becker, B. (2008). The data warehouse lifecycle toolkit:pratctical techniques for building data warehouse and business intelligence systems. (2 ed., pp. 56-59). New Jersey: Wiley. Read More