Firm+Analysis+Part+6

At this time Trader Joe’s uses their product differentiation strategy to maintain a competitive advantage within the grocery store industry. Their average competitive advantage is based on successfully using vertical backward integration and staying loyal to their brand by selling organic/natural products of value all within a neighborhood store.

** Suggestions to Management **

Trader Joe’s must be able to use their weaknesses to their advantage in order to improve their average competitive advantage. As earlier stated, Trader Joe’s does not allow its customers to conveniently engage in giving feedback support. With technology being used at the consumers' fingertips, it is vital that Trader Joe’s implement an online customer support system. A recommendation that could possibly help eliminate this weakness is to create a store community blog. The community store blog named “Whole Story” is successfully used by their competitor Whole Foods. This community store blog allows the community to partake in conversation regarding new product reviews, the exchange of recipes, a health and nutrition section, and podcasts (Whole Foods IP., LP, 2008). Allowing this online based interaction of blogging can help build a much stronger relationship with the company and its customers.

In the range of customer suppoort feedback, there is no section on Trader Joe’s website that would allow a customer to relay a message to the company. For example, upon visiting their website, customers are not able to send an email to the corporate office. This closes the line of communication between the customer and the company. To eliminate this barrier, on the main website Trader Joe's should create a section where customers can contact the corporate office. Creating a "contact us" section, in addition to the community blog, can allow Trader Joe's to improve upon its weaknesses. Trader Joe's should use this recommendation to its advantage as it is highly efficient due to being low cost and requiring little time to implement.

** Sustaining Competitive Advantage **

In order for a company to become successful in any industry, those within the firm must realize that customer experience is a critical component in generating customer loyalty. This is a key element that makes Trader Joe’s successful in the grocery industry. This firm believes in engaging the customer as much as possible, especially when it comes to the value of products they offer. Embracing the interaction of the customer as much as possible can further build upon and sustain the customer loyalty Trader Joe's already has established.

Trader Joe’s is a company that has exceeded their perception of just a mom-and-pop store; they are able to excel in the grocery industry because they keep their business portfolio a “secret to public scrutiny” (Lomax, 2010). Preventing the exposure of their business operations, Trader Joe's is able to keep the name of their suppliers a secret. Being able to maintain this information in secrecy from their rivals and customers allows Trader Joe’s to provide products to their customers at reasonably low prices. In comparison to their competitor, Trader Joe's offers less of a variety to their consumers. In doing this, Trader Joe’s has learned that they are able to “have a greater turnover on a small number of items, they can buy large quanities and secure deep discounts. (Kowitt, 2010) With the continuation of these techniques that Trader Joe's has implemented within their business operation, they will be able to sustain their competitive advantage.