As the elasticity of demand for their products is flat Kudler could easily increase prices on new products and consumers would still buy them. They are missing out on a major opportunity to drive up profitability as a result.
Customer's Preferences for Selection and Unmet Wants
Large-scale retailers often rely on a framework of research to define the preferences and unmet wants or needs of customers by segment and audience (Thompson, Stanton, 2010). This framework impacts everything from the planograms used for laying out retail stores to the definition of pricing and discounting, including seasonal specials on given products (Thompson, Stanton, 2010). Kudler most likely does not have one of these for even the commercial chef market yet, and as a result is missing out on a very significant revenue opportunity. The use of these frameworks can greatly simplify supply chain coordination, store planning, and the development of store promotions. Kudler needs to address the lack of insight into the customer preferences and wants, and needs to build a framework to better capture and use them over time.
Customer Behavior and Purchase Patterns
Most likely Kudler does not capture the sales of bakery items, unique and hard-to-fine ingredients, chef supplies or any of the fresh fruits and meats they sell by customer name or any type of demographic indicator. They have no loyalty program to capture sales by customer to further analyze and determine how best to structure specials and promotions. All of these aspects of research could provide the company with a wealth of insight into customer behavior and purchase patterns. This is significant because the selection of new products to fit into these predetermined mixes of shoppers stand a better chance of...
Having more accurate customer behavior data also means that events the store plans have a greater potential for success if the manager can define the event in terms relevant to key customer groups. All these insights can be gains from customer behavior data and purchase trending data analysis.
Psychographics
The study of how people define themselves individually and within groups, psychographics is a powerful segmentation and audience definition technique. Kudler needs to create a methodology specially focused on capturing the psychographics of their customer base and then define programs and events accordingly (Wagner, 2010). The insight into psychographics of these higher-income segments could be the most valuable research the company completes.
Competitive Intelligence
Finally, Kudler also has many competitors across the Internet and needs to realize that the use of social networking can be a strong platform for better understanding the competitive dynamics of their market (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Kudler could also use social networking to better understand their competitors, many of which most likely have Facebook and Twitter accounts as well. Finally, the blogs of competitors in the area and across the Web could provide to be a rich source of competitive insight as well.
References
Bernoff, J., & Li, C. (2008). Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web. MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(3), 36-42.
Megan Thompson & John Stanton. (2010). A framework for implementing retail franchises internationally. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28(6), 689-705.
Wagner, B. (2010). Authenticity: what consumers really want, International Journal of Market Research, 52(4), 547.
