Tweeter Price Competitiveness

The three main competitive strategies are cost leadership, differentiation, and price strategy. Cost leadership focuses on acquiring raw material of the highest quality at the lowest price. In return this company can lower production cost with the goal of being the company with the lowest production cost in the industry. Differentiation strategies allow companies to make their products stand out from the others. Differentiation can be actual or perceived. Actual differentiation occurs when the company creates products that are not available elsewhere. Perceived differentiation takes a lot of marketing and advertisement to convince the consumer that this company’s product is superior. Price strategy includes a variety of strategies that cause a particular product to be marketed at the lowest price possible. Price strategy includes skimming where companies set a high initial price only to turn around and lower it. Bundle pricing occurs when several products are offered for one price. Promotional pricing allows other incentives to buy such as buy one get one half off. Using the pricing strategies causes many consumers to actually purchase more believing that they are receiving a “deal” while the company is still profiting. Competitive strategies are always used by companies and are often used together. Companies that understand how to combine competitive strategies fare much

Grocery industry is a highly competitive market with thin profit margins. Super markets are dominant players in the grocery industry. They use grocery offerings to drive traffic to their higher profit margin retail items. With its operations efficiency, Walmart, the largest grocery retailer has been able to offer significant price drops. This also forces other grocery stores to drop prices which keeps the profit margin thin. Even with all the advantages of operational efficiency and economies of scale, Walmart’s share in grocery sales was down at 51% in 2011.

During a meeting held to address the situation Johnson’s accountant Jim Thomas presented a compiled report on customers profitability and profit margin where customer service costs are allocated to customers as a percentage of revenue. This analysis brought Johnson to the conclusion that Saver Superstore is not a very profitable customer compared to other client retailers ,that it is one of their lowest-margin customers and he can’t consider lowering prices for them.

Social media has become an essential channel for corporations to build a two-way relationship with their customers. However, having a social media account cannot solve everything. To make the best use of social media in keeping a positive relationship with their customers, corporations ought to seek and maintain influence among their followers in social media, and participate in communications with them.

The US warehouse club and superstore industry includes about 20 companies; however the major competitors that Costco faces are Sam 's Club (owned by Wal-Mart), BJ’s Wholesale Club, and Meijer. The club superstore industry is so competitive that these four companies alone hold over 90 percent of sales. These superstores are able to offer competitive pricing because as large companies they can offer a wide selection of products and have purchasing, distribution, marketing, and financing advantages. Due to low margins, the profitability of these individual superstore companies depends on high volume sales and efficient operations. This is where Costco has been able to succeed and set itself aside from the competitors.

However, lowering the price decreases the overall profit of the market thus, non-price competition is most important win-win strategy for all the firm. As the game, does not allow us to make product differentiation, the other method that can increase the sales are advertising, product development and E-commerce enhancement. If these expenditures are below market average level, the firm can lose the market share.

Best Buy, a familiar retailer in the technology world, is struggling to stay on top. Online and mass stores have cornered the market in terms of convenience, customer service and price matching. The recent closing of over two hundred stores alongside falling sales has experts predicting that the giant won’t be in business long. Using a results-only work environment (ROWE), Best Buy has removed the customer from the equation and forced many employees out. A marketing disaster, Best Buy must change its marketing strategy from sales-based to a customer-based to stay afloat.

Twitter has been segmented since the creation of the company; they tend to have a consumer base in the age group of 13 to 35 years of age. The age group of 13 to 35 tend to spend the most money, however this consumer base taste tend to be very inconsistent. Twitter is experiencing a maturity phase. In the maturity phase, there is little growth and the profit margin has reached its highest peak. If present circumstances are any forecast of the future, Twitter Inc. is in the early portion of the declining stage. In the declining stage there is no growth and the company spread sheet starts to show the company in operating in the red or negative.

Competitive pricing: because HN has a large share of the market they are “price leaders” and other businesses follow them

The Intensity of Rivalry among Competitors in an Industry (High): Equally balanced competitors exist within the industry such as BCF and KMD; these firms also face competition from retailers and wholesalers. The growth of the industry is relatively agile in both financial and technological aspects. The intensity or rivalry is further accentuated by relatively high storage and fixed rental costs, extensive product differentiation and minimal switching costs.

70% of Tweeter customers are in the Quality/Service Type but only represented 10% of total market in New England. By having most of customer base in smallest market segment Tweeter needs to create a marketing strategy to satisfy its current customer base in order to become 100% loyal. Value proposition and differentiation will be key drivers in order to keep current customers satisfied. 20% of tweeter customers are price-biters, so these customers could be potentially lost to lower-cost perceived retailers. With APP introduction Tweeter could overcome price competition by offering current customers the peace of mind that they will pay the lowest price without the need of lowering retail prices and continue to offer great customer service. This strategy works perfectly because customers will not see cheap retail prices which could trade down Tweeter’s image of being a high-end quality retailer to a low cost cheap retailer.

The last alternative could be to create a better marketing about their products, to compare their brand with the competition so the market can understand that the differences between prices is because of the good quality, the brand name, the knowledge, and that they are the only ones, the expert ones on those kind of products.

Stores like Wal-Mart are famous for keeping their prices so low. This is one reason why they are able to maintain a grip on the consumers of an area. They accomplish this by keeping the cost to produce and transport the goods low. In January, a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. found that, “an individual family could save $589 a year on groceries by shopping at a supercenter. Overall, shoppers could save $3.76 billion in merchandise nationwide.” (Blazier, A, 2004) A major reason they can keep prices lower than mom-and-pop run businesses is their ability to buy merchandise in bulk. Buying in bulk works the same way it does for a consumer. The more of a product that is purchased, the less the cost is per unit. Consumers see this every day when they go to stores like Sam’s Club or Costco. When they buy their merchandise in bulk, they are able to offer it to the consumer at a lower price. (Kale, 2011) This is what could eventually drive the mom-and-pop owned businesses out of the area, and draw a negative criticism from the public. The interesting thing about this criticism is that the public complains about Wal-Mart

Competitive analysis is an important part of your business plan, there are a lot of different alternatives in the market, costumers usually look for different sets of values to focus on, benefit levels and what does the item include when they are choosing where to buy the product from. Even though costumers usually choose similar products to those alternatives, and that’s where competition is created.

Companies in the retail industry operate in a high price elasticity environment as there is not much product differentiation to leverage. Buyers face almost no switching cost if they chose a substitute offering better value. On the contrary, large and diverse population making small purchases works in favor of the industry. No one individual or a small group has the power to significantly impact the industry, but overall buyers enjoy have a high bargaining power in the industry.