Retail Positioning and Marketing: Whole Food Supermarket

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Marketing: Whole Food Supermarket
Retail positioning forms the basis upon which a retail store competes with the other. Any firm starts to position itself by defining its prospective customers in regards to their distinctive needs and ends at the point where unique set of executable action steps are pointed out to attain an identity in the mind of customers, an identity that the customers experience in the store, and that which they can make out in their minds. According to Michael Porter's competitive strategy theory, there exist two main competitive defensible strategies that can be pursued by retailers on a long term basis and these include low cost and differentiation. The low-cost retailers succeed by reducing product choice and rental costs as well as introducing a self-service shopping environment. Differentiation retailers, on the other hand, merge high levels of sales assistance by committed and skilled staff members who have specialized in merchandise, and a shopping environment viewed by the consumers as entertaining, fun and exciting. This paper will explore the retail position of Whole Food Supermarket located in Connecticut to establish whether the atmosphere that it has put in place successfully reflects its positioning.
Whole Food Supermarket is the fastest growing grocery retailer in the United States, and it is located in two other countries: Canada and the United Kingdom. This retailer has branded itself as the “World’s Leading Natural and Organic Foods Supermarket” and its positioning is purely based on the value provision to the customers and not pricing. In this regard, I did notice that this retailer has created an atmosphere that is characterized by highly skilled staff, and that is attractive to customers because as most of them find it entertaining, fun and exciting. In my view, this atmosphere successfully reflects their positioning because these are the ingredients of a differentiation retailer as is illustrated in the competitive strategy theory.
The store has heavily invested on entertainment so that their customers can enjoy some fun while shopping. Right from music, color, scents, picture, just but to mention a few, the store has got no match. I was able to listen to different genres of music at different sections of the store in line with the preference of the prospective customers of the goods found in each section. My sense of smell was confronted with scents that are most likely varied in origins. The store is also brightly colored to add as an additional tool to ensure that customers are excited so that they have the urge to visit over and over again. Pictures including those of landscapes, technologi...