Marketing Mix paper

Essay by hpana00University, Bachelor's June 2006

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The supermarket industry is very competitive. The average consumer has more than five choices in their immediate geographic location and over twenty choices within any major city. The marketing mix plays a key role in enticing consumers to spend at your grocery store verses the competition up the street. With so many stores to choose from the competition is fierce within the grocery industry. The right product mix, price, place, product, and promotion, will help Safeway "dominate the middle" of the grocery retail market.

"Dominate the middle" is a saying that can be heard frequently around Safeway. It refers to the three tears of the Super Market industry. At the top is specialty markets such as Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Andronicos. In the Middle are Safeway, Albertsons Raley's and Ralph's. The bottom third is the low cost market such as Winco, Food 4 Less, and Wal-Mart. Safeway knows it is not a specialty market such as Whole Foods and it will never be a low price leader such as Winco.

So dominating the middle over Albertsons and Raley's is the plan.

Safeway is currently revamping its marketing department to help boost sales and increase stock prices. The main focus of the SPA (single point of accountability) marketing task force is to maximize Safeway's corporate leverage, while continuing to respect regional differences and the need for divisional flexibility. They plan on accomplishing this through customer focus; the shopper is the boss, leading and embracing change, and having a winning attitude. This will be accomplished when shoppers say, "Safeway is my favorite place to shop", Vendors say that Safeway is our best customer, and employees say that Safeway is a great place to work.

According to an article on the Safeway intranet dated December 20, 2004 "Safeway has made dramatic improvements...