Trader Joe's Writeup

Trader Joe’s

No average Joe

Trader Joe’s is an American privately held chain of grocery stores founded by Joe Coulombe. Trader Joe’s have been successful business for long time with their unique innovative strategy of selling natural and organic food products with only one brand of an item for low price. Their unique culture of relaxed beach environment and helpful knowledgeable employees makes their customer to stay loyal to the brand. Eighty percent of Trader Joe’s has in-house products that differentiate them from competitors and hard to imitate. Trader Joe’s target young educated people who want to eat healthy for low prices. They can really expand their business by investing in marketing, social media, loyalty- card program and building parking garages and gain bigger broader market segment in food industry. This also will help them competitive advantage over their competitors as they will have solid brand image and be successful over the long term.

SWOT Analysis

                The strengths of Trader Joe’s are selling organic & fresh grocery at low prices, introducing new products to their stores frequently and offering friendly customer service. Trader Joe’s sell natural and organic food at cheaper price than its competitors. They buy in bulk one item rather than buying lot of similar items, which gives them competitive advantage over other supermarkets. Trader Joe’s introduce 10-15 new products every week and had special season items and; thus customers liked trying new items and were getting best product for as much time as stores had the products for. Trader Joe’s employees were knowledgeable, helpful and happy, which made them communicate much better with customers and build a long lasting relationship. This aided in Trader Joe’s customers becoming loyal to the company.

                 The weaknesses of Trader Joe’s are lack in social media, low advertisement, and targeting small market segment. Firstly, Trader Joe’s didn't have any interaction with media about the company. In addition, they were not utilizing the free social media tool and were not communicating with their fans on Facebook or Twitter. They didn't much advertise about the company which is a weakness because this would hurt the sales they can get by advertising since they were selling natural and organic products for low prices. Lastly they targeted only smaller crowd which would also affect that revenue instead of targeting broader segment of people.