Winco Foods supermarket, an American company has addressed lots of attention of people from Vancouver recently. As a matter of fact, more and more people from Vancouver are driving to shopping in State due to the high price of grocery and taxes in B.C. With 100 KM round trip driving from Vancouver to Bellingham, a family of 4 people could save at least $400 dollars on daily grocery and gas each month. Even there are American supermarket like Costco and Walmart in Vancouver, some people are willing to go Costco and Walmart in State to purchase grocery, since the average price differences and taxes between two countries are still somewhat large. If you have a family with more than 3 people, it is wise to buy whole packs of grocery from Costco. But, you are required to join their membership with $50 dollars per year. Some people think that the membership cost worth the benefits they will receive.

In  July 2013, a new branch of Winco was opened in Bellingham. Obviously, the targeted market is not the local market in State, but the market from Vancouver. People started to transfer their shopping place from Costco to Winco. The main reason is th at Winco does not require any membership. Anyone can go and buy their lowest price grocery. Also, the new store opens 24 hours, 7 days a week. With those advantages, Winco was able to establish a competitive position in the market.

If you have been to Winco once, you could notice that they do not only place their selling price of products. They also show the price of same products at  Costco, Walmart, and other local supermarket. This action provides the customers a picture of guaranteed lowest price in the market. Another advantage over Costco is that you can buy products like water, pop, chips in any quantities you want rather than you have to buy a whole pack of drinks in Costco.

As my point of view, Winco targets itself as a developed supermarket of Costco, and is trying too snatch the market from Costco. At the customers’ point of view, as long as the qualities of products are same, they will pursue the lowest price and most convenience supermarket with no doubt.

Peng Zhang

As a most innovative smart phone company in the world, Apple has attracted everyone’s attention on its new products. Since the miracle of iPhone 4, people are getting higher expectations on the next generation of iPhone.

The new iPhone5s and iPhone5c launched in Canada market at September 20th. iPhone5s, a new continues generation of iPhone5, has the most advanced technologies from Apple. However, more people are interested on the iPhone5c which is the first product rated as “lower class” in iPhone family. With the technologies from iPhone5 and new material surface, iPhone5c was being expected by people who are not willing to pay $700 dollars on a cellphone. People were expecting to buy an iPhone5c with a price around half of a new iPhone5S. However, it turned out that iPhone5c is only $120 cheaper than iPhone5s.

Lots people began to critisize the marketing strategy of apple. If Apple wants to make profits from those people who are not able to pay almost $800 for an iPhone, Apple should at least make a reasonable price differences between those two new products. Therefore, some people said that the iPhone5c is just a marketing strategy of Apple. When people are thinking iPhone5s is too expensive for them, they will take a look at iPhone5c. With only $120 more expensive, most people will spend $800 to get iPhone5s which is the best newest and best iPhone now. Before the launch of iPhone5c, people were guessing that Apple was targeting the market in China. Since there are millions of people are willing to use an iPhone, but not able to pay the money, Apple designed a new products just for those people. But no one knew that they all mis-predict the marketing strategy of Apple.

Also, if we go to the US Apple website, we can see that the price of new iPhone5s is $649. The price of new iPhone5s is $720 in Canada. Obviously, the marketing strategy is different for US and Canada. But why they set different prices for two markets with similar behaviour?

Peng Zhang  2013/10/01