Kudler Fine Foods

Kudler Fine Foods (KFF) is a growing company on the move. The company is on the edge to expand services, improve efficiency in its operations, and increase the consumer purchase cycle. To accomplish these goals the company’s marketing strategies will become a defining factor in how successful KFF will be at achieving its goals. KFF will collect information from surveys to use in defining plans to rollout programs, which will help the company obtain its goals.

KFF has now grown beyond the Introduction phase through its significant growth and focus on expansion. It is during this phase that the both sales and awareness will naturally increase as it is only now really entering the market. And here is truly why the research is important. Market research is an essential part of any business that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimize risk and pay dividends and by making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the lifecycle of a product or service market research will bring benefits. For KFF, market research will help them better communicate their current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow Kudler to gauge how well they currently meet customer expectations they can also tell Kudler where they are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking the customer you not only show them that you care but you also take the guess work out of customer services. Market research helps you identify opportunities; If you are planning to operate a new service and want to know the preconceived attitudes people have then market research can help, not only in evaluating the potential for a new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to honed. Market research will minimize risk, and it can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.

The marketing mix or the four P’s will guide KFF towards the company’s goals. These are the marketing manager’s controllable factors: product, price, promotion, and place; that can be used to solve a marketing problem. The marketing mix elements are called controllable factors because they are under the control of the marketing department in an organization (Kerin, Hartley, Berkowitz, Rudelius, 2006). The product KFF offers is gourmet foods and catering services. KFF is synonymous with gourmet and wish to present a unique catering service for the company’s customers. Having a diverse menu would allow Kudler’s to satisfy the needs of a wide customer base, but it also allows customers to choose how expensive the catering will be.

One of the obvious trends in business today is increased competition. One reason for so much competition is because the World is now one single marketplace. Additionally, distribution channels like the internet now make it possible for anyone to enter the global marketplace. As a result of increased competition, the rate of change taking place in business is increasing exponentially. For example, internet usage now doubles every 100 days. If you expect to keep-up and survive in this fast paced competitive environment, you must know what the competition is doing. So how do you monitor the competition in this age of information overload? The answer is with Competitive Intelligence. For Kudler, this process should allow them to collect, analyze, and transform information into intelligence so they can manage the future. The overall objective of this is to identify events, trends, and other issues that will impact the organization.

The best way for them to implement this is to focus on critical questions confronting their organization. For example, how this could pertain to location or size. Critical issues must continually be monitored if they expect to compete. Failing to implement this, they will run the risk of operating in a reactive mode.

In order for Kudler Fine Food to determine where to cater, the company will have to determine their target market and determine how large