Whole Foods Market is an American supermarket chain with its

headquarters in Austin, Texas. It was established in 1980 with the

merger of SaferWay and Clarksville Natural Grocery stores. Today
Whole Foods Market has over 400 stores in USA, Canada and United
Kingdom with over 91000 employees.
The company’s mission is to “promote vitality and well-being of all
individuals by supplying the highest quality, most wholesome foods
available” (Whole Foods Market, 2013). Some of the company’s core
values are: selling the highest quality natural and organic products,
support team member excellence, create wealth through profits and
growth, serve and support local and global communities.

1.Discuss the promotion strategy of Whole foods. Why or why not is

it appropriate? Elaborate.

Whole Foods Market has been generally averse to run ads in either
print or visual media. They rely on their brand awareness to get
customers to their stores and ensure that the shopping experience
will entice the customers to come back. WFM’s marketing expenses
has been less than 0.5% of sales for over past 10 years (Bells, 2015).
The company did not even have a loyalty program until 2015 and still
has developed a loyal customer following everywhere.
The company relies a lot on word of mouth and social media. They
have active marketing team on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and
Instagram with a combined reach of 11 million followers.
Even though the strategy employed by wholefoods has worked till
now and has been very cost effective, the organization really needs
to rethink its promotional strategy in this era of online retailing and
heavy competitors.
2. Discuss the Positioning of Whole Foods.

Whole Foods Market positions itself as the best source for healthiest,
natural and organic foods among its competitors and is the first
grocery store to be “Certified Organic” in America. It has voluntarily
certified all its stores and operations and till date is the only food
retailer that has all store departments in all locations certified
(Whole Foods Market, 2015).
Whole Foods differentiates itself from its competitors by relying on
its stringent high quality standards. It is also certified by California
Certified Organic Farmers (“CCOF”), an independent, USDA-
accredited, third- party certifier. CCOF’s Organic Certification
Program verifies Whole Foods handles organic goods according to
stringent USDA guidelines (Whole Foods Market, 2015). One of the
key positioning strategy of Whole Foods is its supply chain.
It procures its products from local and global producers and ensures
that its products are manufactured without violating any labour laws,
human rights or animal rights.
The target customers for Whole Foods Market are individuals and
families whose income is well above the national average, lead a
healthy lifestyle and conscious of environment. Most of the
customers have college degrees and live in upscale sub-urban or
metropolitan areas. Another target group of Whole Foods are
wealthy customers.
3. Do you think doubling the number of stores is a sound strategy
when “Americans spend far less of their income on food than other
nations”. Explain your point of view.
Under the current market scenario expanding the number of stores
is not a good strategy, this is clearly evident if we look at other major
retailers in the US like k mart, target, etc. They are reducing the
number of stores due to the lack of revenue. Instead of focusing on
doubling the stores Wholefoods must focus on needs to aggressively
market about it stringent quality standards. Other major
supermarket chains are able to provide organic produce at lower
price points since they do not follow the same standards as Whole
Foods. Since American’s spend less of their income on foods, more
number of stores doesn’t necessarily increase the sales.
So the best strategy is to have a new and improved promotional
strategy that will not just attract customer’s nut also educate them
about the benefits of eating healthy. Whole Foods is perceived as a
very expensive store and not many people are aware of various
discounts and sales that happen at store. This needs to be changed.