Social Media Analysis Of American Grocery Store

Nordstrom is a part of every type of social media. They advertise their new arrivals on Facebook and Twitter. Nordstrom has an Instagram account for each store where they post different outfit ideas, or new arrivals in the store. Nordstrom employees always make every effort to let all customers know about what is coming in and what is trending. They help many fashion-forward customers, keeping them in the loop about what is being sold to provide them with optimal customer service. Nordstrom sends out emails and phone calls whenever they have a sale to promote it. Nordstrom gives card holders early access to all of their sales and bonus reward opportunities so they will visit and shop again (Shannon).

We have all been to a supermarket or store at some point in our lives. Have we found ourselves placing items in the cart that we did not come to buy, and why is that? Is there a reason the products we need are located in the back of the store? Marion Nestle wrote an article entitled, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” She teaches in the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University. Nestle writes a column regarding food for the San Francisco Chronicle. Shortly after reading the title, one can determine Nestle opposes supermarkets. “Prime Real Estate,” indicates that large supermarkets are feeding grounds for them against unsuspecting customers. Supermarkets can determine what somebody will buy, based on where the store places certain products. The general argument made by Nestle in her work, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate, is that supermarkets are taking advantage of our unconscious mind and we are purchasing products on impulse.

Trader Joe’s is an organic grocery food store that is one of the best known organic food chains. By listening to the consumer and adjusting to the changing consumer market, Trader Joe’s had built a brand equity that is continuously growing. Trader Joe’s faces stiff competition from other large organic food chains therefore must stand out and adapt to the consumers’ needs. Marketing strategies are important to communicate to the consumer more effectively and help target the consumer to their product. Trader Joe’s segments its products by psychographic, behavioral and demographic characteristics

The grocery industry has a relatively high market commonality; a lot of grocery stores are somewhat related in terms of technologies used, labor force and the products or services offered in the stores. Differentiation with other competitors is key for survival in this highly competitive industry.

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

Whenever I go to Stop & Shop, I tend to take interest in the thousands of products that surround me as I walk down an aisle. The wafting aroma of freshly baked pastries and the sight of cold soft drinks are just some of the things that trigger my appetite for food. Most often, I find myself buying more than what I originally planned on. That’s exactly what the layout of a supermarket tries to make consumers do. Marion Nestle argues in her article, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate”, how supermarkets employ clever tactics such as product layout in order to make consumers spend as much money as possible. She covers fundamental rules that stores employ in order to keep customers in aisles for the longest time, a series of cognitive studies that stores perform on customers, and examples of how supermarkets encourage customers to buy more product. Overall, Nestle’s insight into how supermarkets manipulate people into spending extra money has made me a more savvy consumer and I feel if more people were to read her article, then they can avoid some of the supermarket’s marketing tactics as well.

Renee Brooks Catacalos and Kristi Bahrenburg Janzen wrote, “Suburban Foraging: Two Families Eat Only Local,” and found that, “Price comparisons revealed that no one store was cheaper across the board” (120). They wrote this piece to inform others of their journey and some details that weren’t originally on the market. One grocery store in particular,

The supermarket that is described by Michael Pollan in  “A Naturalist in the Supermarket,” is one that is distant with nature. We do not know where anything really comes from as he points out. Pollan tells us that supermarkets stages, so that their stores seem to be connected with nature, by displaying fruits, vegetables, and more in front to appeal to our senses. He says that the stores spritz the vegetables with “morning dew”, the only problem is that they are inside, and no morning dew exists. He writes very sarcastic throughout the essay, giving the idea that he does not appreciate how today’s supermarket works. If supermarkets were to follow the three rules that Nicolette Hahn Niman writes in her text, “The Carnivore’s Dilemma”, then the supermarkets could be changed.

Grocery shopping is more diversified and evolved than ever before. Individuals across the nation have access to everything from exotic products to unique delivery services. Often, specialty stores have limited locations whereas specialty services have a limited reach. However, two retailers have expanded to hundreds of locations while adhering to unexpected market positioning for previously untargeted market segments. Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s have become household names while also innovating beyond regional and national traditional chains. Despite comparable size in

Marion Nestle, a teacher at New York University, examines how supermarkets are designed and how the design affects consumers in her essay “The Supermarket: The Prime Estate”. “Nestle teaches in the department of nutrition, food studies, and public health” (496). The essay was published in one of her numerous books, What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating in 2006. Nestle investigates the strategic method behind the store’s layout in this essay for the average consumer. Nestle portrays the manipulations of supermarkets to sell the most products possible to consumers through the store’s order and design through logos, pathos, and cause and consequence in the development of her essay.

Larger stores also offer people the convenience of additional services along with their shopping, for example post office, pharmacy and opticians. By addressing consumer’s expectations and using their buyer power they can offer a choice of products to reflect consumer’s diverse budgetary, dietary, ethical and environmental requirements. Furthermore their global buyer power enables consumers to benefit from choosing exotic produce all year round. With 30,000,000 customers (Bevan cited in Allen, 2009) choosing to use the big four supermarkets on a weekly basis it would suggest that they provide a format that consumers want.

Social media has become an essential channel for corporations to build a two-way relationship with their customers. However, having a social media account cannot solve everything. To make the best use of social media in keeping a positive relationship with their customers, corporations ought to seek and maintain influence among their followers in social media, and participate in communications with them.

The second force that I will use to analyze the Trader Joe’s company is the “the rivalry among established competitors”. Factors to consider when looking at the rivalries in the industry are industry demand, cost conditions, and exit barriers. Trader Joe’s competitors include The Kroger Co., Whole Foods Market, and Safewat Inc., and all super markets in general (Llopis, 2011). With that said, there seems to be a high demand for what Trader Joe’s offers, private labels. This means that the intensity in the industry is less compared to an industry with a flat demand. Trader Joe’s does not have to fight hard to sell their products because of the service they have created. Trader Joe’s brand can be considered “diversity on steroids” which has somewhat of a cult following among consumers (Llopis, 2011). Consumers that want unique experiences with their food are able to do exactly that at

The grocery retail industry worldwide has grown in recent years to become one of the most intensely competitive industries due to the continuous amounts of new entrants. A grocery retailer is one that sells food and other general household items. Hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounters and small grocery retailers are all under the grocery retail umbrella. Between 2003 and 2008, the grocery retailing industry accounted for 45% of store-based retail values sales over the world. The figures

     The main substitute to buying your food from a grocer is going out to eat. A 2002 Gallop poll shows that Americans eating more meals outside of the home than ever before. When examining today’s changing supermarket consumer in Progressive Grocer, Buck Jones made this observation: “To get the total picture we need to look outside the supermarket arena at how customers are using other retail outlets to satisfy the needs that we could be addressing.” The success