After I have read Elizabeth’s blog on the positioning of TOMS shoes (https://blogs.ubc.ca/elizabethzhang/), it had come to me that in order to be a successful company your goals, direction, and mission has to match the consumer you are targeting. Hence, a company needs to have the right market segment, clear target, and position itself so that it can approach the right type of customer. An example, that I will discuss is the Sprouts Farmers Market, although, it is a grocery store/supermarket but it does differentiate itself really well from its competitors. For more info visit: http://www.sprouts.com/
Sprouts, a Phoenix-based chain of grocery store has a very clear target. Its market targeting strategy that is being adopted is the ‘concentrated market strategy’ where the firm goes after a large share of one or a few smaller segments or niche, in this case, the grocery shoppers who are interested in buying healthy, natural, organic, and fresh groceries. Also, the firm had gain its competitive advantage from targeting these growing market of healthy shopper by offering product from organic meat to health and body cares at an inexpensive price. As a result, it has been very profitable ever since its establishment.
In addition, Sprouts had position itself really well. The store sends a strong message as an organic/healthy grocery store, which differentiated itself from its competitor and proving that it’s not just another ordinary grocery store. Also, it had position itself such that consumer perceive the good to be in high quality and low price- its slogan is “We are here to help America eat healthier, spend less, and live longer”. For example, the impression that it gives is all the goods are fresh, organic, and healthy from local farms with lots of variety at low price. A customer going into Sprouts would feel like going into a real farmers market to buy fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, etc.
From my personal experience, I had a chance to go to Sprouts during my time in Arizona. My first impression when I went into the store was “Wow”, to how fresh the fruits, vegetables, meats are. They gave a sense that I’m actually in a real Farmers Market by how they displayed their products using barrels and staff wearing jeans pants and vacation shirts. The product I bought was not common in other place as it is an organic toothpaste, which have emphasize how its product matches the mission to sell organic merchandise and differentiated from other stores.
