Costco Marketing Plan

1. The grocery industry is a commoditized industry, which makes it difficult for grocers to sustain through differentiation. Buyer power is high and thus, cost leadership and operational efficiencies are critical. There is fierce competition amongst various grocery stores, with the main players such as Loblaw and A&P holding multi-banner stores in various market segments. Traditional grocery stores also lose some of their market share to drug stores, convenience stores and other retailers who have entered the industry. Threat of substitutes from fast-food and take- away outlets is not as prevalent, since many grocery stores have started stocking ready-to-eat meals and have deli services available for consumers. Competitive

For operations, Costco's in charge of managing their store brand Kirkland Signature. Since they have domain over that brand, they are better able to control the caliber of their product. They also maintain the packaging assembly-line in order to accomplish the goal of having an efficient shipment arrangements, and low shrinkage rates. This way Costco can have low rates for quality goods. By keeping their operational costs low they can continue to pass the savings onto their customers.

Costco’s infrastructure skills and capabilities support operations for achieving low cost global leadership in warehouse retail sales and better than industry average. Costco’s culture strives to provide a limited variety of quality merchandise goods from private label and some well established brands.

If focusing on the retail industry it involved, such as Coles supermarket, the main competition comes from its countpart, Woolworth. Coles and Safeway are the two main retailors in Australia as analysed by Inside Retailing organisation in Australia. Australia’s retail industry has developed to become a leading industry in the national market as well as in the world market. As this article indicates, all entities in the retail industry confront pierce competition. Also cited in the article, a 1966 issue of trade magazine Inside the Food Industry observed that: Woolworths and Coles are now nearing 10% of total Australian retail sales. They are opening more stores than anyone else. Up until now, this figure can be much bigger than 10 percent; and the competition between retailers is increasingly intense.

Grocery industry is a highly competitive market with thin profit margins. Super markets are dominant players in the grocery industry. They use grocery offerings to drive traffic to their higher profit margin retail items. With its operations efficiency, Walmart, the largest grocery retailer has been able to offer significant price drops. This also forces other grocery stores to drop prices which keeps the profit margin thin. Even with all the advantages of operational efficiency and economies of scale, Walmart’s share in grocery sales was down at 51% in 2011.

Costco is among the leading global retailers which provide customers a wide range of merchandise, ranging from small to well-known brands. The company began operations in 1983. Over the years, Costco has been a retailer in low cost membership-only leader, in warehouse club of merchandise. Moreover, Costco does not offer frills warehouse business models as its competitors do.  Costco’s major competitors are BJ’s Wholesale Club and Sam Club (Costco, 2010).

Costco also saves money by not stocking extra bags or packing materials; to carry out their goods, customers must bring their own bags or use the merchandise shipping boxes from the company's outside vendors.

The trunk shows are a unique distribution method for wedding gowns, and this is a unique strategy for Costco as well. There are a few reasons why this method would have been chosen. The first is that the wedding gown business is highly seasonal, and that would encourage Costco to keep gowns in store for a relatively short period of time. However, the more important element is that this strategy meshes very well with the pricing strategy. Costco's objective is to sell a large number of wedding gowns in a short period of time. The trunk show accomplishes just that, by placing a tight time frame on the purchase decision. Brides-to-be are compelled to visit the store when the trunk show is on, and only then. This allows Costco to maximize the daily throughput of wedding gowns, and minimize excess inventory. Any unsold inventory from one show simply is taken to the next one.

It’s a very appealing business model because what it does for Costco is it enables them to secure vendor purchasing power in volume. With their large warehouse facilities this enables them to distribute products on their floors efficiently while being able to store any leftover in house. This increases the availability of turnover. Also, with their large warehouses and lack of design beyond what’s necessity, it enables them to provide customer service without over investing in design.

Thus, Costco has positively increased the liquidity of its assets and increased its inventory turnover over this five year period.

The grocery industry is highly fragmented, with a multitude of strong regional players (Safeway, Publix, Kroeger, Wegmans, etc.). The largest grocery retailer in the United States is Wal-Mart, with an estimated 33% share. Other major retailers are targeting this segment of the industry, focused on a relatively narrow selection of key commodity foods at relatively low prices (Forbes, 2011). Whole Foods competes in a segment occupied by differentiated grocery players including Trader Joe's, Fresh Market and a highly fragmented selection of local and regional upscale and health-conscious grocery stores. The big players in the industry usually carry ranges of organic and natural products as well, siphoning off some business from Whole Foods. As Whole Foods grows, it comes into competition with mainstream grocery retailers more frequently (McLaughlin & Martin, 2009).

Costco is one of the nation’s top three retailers and the world’s largest membership warehouse chain, Costco wholesale Canada operates about 80 membership warehouse clubs across Canada. The company never advertises, charges its 64 million members to shop there and doesn’t mark up any product more than 15 percent, even at this lowest profit margin, 15% for Kirkland private brand, the products were 20% lower than comparable to other brand products. Costco works with this business model and generating $93 billion in annual sales.

The advantages of a centralized warehouse is higher service levels and lower inventory holding costs due to aggregating customer demand and pooling risk. That is, if customer demand is high in one region and lower in another, there will be no need to hold excess inventory in a regional warehouse; the variation in demand will balance out and reduce the requirements for excess inventory. Additionally, the fixed costs of maintaining one central warehouse/distribution center will be lower than five regional warehouses.

The strategy for Costco was that the company continued to buy merchandise at volume discounts from manufacturers, rather than distributors. The stock is usually shipped directly to selling warehouses to minimize freight costs. Stocked items are placed directly onto the selling floor or are still stacked on their pallets, reducing handling and stocking labor. The number of sales and service employees is also minimal, with a large percentage of the employees holding part-time status. Warehouses are almost entirely self-service, from finding and buying items, to loading them into a customer's vehicle. (Miller, 2011)

There are over 1,178 warehouse club locations across the U.S. and Canada, including Costco’s US warehouses. Unfortunately for the industry, expansion through small-size stores by the industry’s major players is expected to