MKT00720 - Analyzing Marketing Strategies: Coles vs Woolworths

This case study analyzes the marketing strategies employed by Coles and Woolworths, two major supermarket chains in Australia, to gain a competitive advantage. It examines their approaches to customer retention, market segmentation, product diversification, and promotional activities. The report highlights the importance of adapting to changing customer demands, leveraging customer feedback, and utilizing a marketing mix to achieve business objectives. It also discusses the role of social media, customer service, and public relations in building brand loyalty and increasing revenue. Ultimately, the success of both companies is attributed to their ability to effectively adapt to the business environment and implement appropriate marketing strategies.

Running head: MARKETING
Marketing
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Describing two cases..................................................................................................................2
Evidence of marketing related success......................................................................................3
Analysis and explanation...........................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
Reference....................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
One of the most famous supermarket chains in Australia is Coles supermarkets.
Established in 1914, it has grown to offer a wide range of products such as general
merchandise, grocery, vegetables, meat, liquor and more. In the subsidiary industry,
Woolworths Supermarkets is the rival of Coles (Knox 2015). Although specializing in
groceries, Woolworths also sales products regarding household, health and beauty. The
success of both companies is for their adoption of effective marketing strategies. Marketing
strategy includes buying supplies, selling products, and advertising brand and products. The
goals of marketing strategies are to sale products, increase target market, and promote and
maintain brand image (Lovelock and Patterson 2015).This report will discuss the current
marketing strategies of the companies, and the way they are proving themselves effective on
the context of marketing.
Describing two cases
The current aim of Woolworths is to retain the success that they have been achieving
in past years. In order to do that, they are focusing on building a stronger relationship with
their buyers and other stakeholders (Grönroos 2015) through carefully planned activities. In
addition, the company is also intending to grow their food and liquor market. Woolworths
understand the value of customer retention. Therefore, they are changing their place strategy
to satisfy the changing customer demand. Along with physical stores, Woolworths offers
their customers virtual stores and websites to make purchasing from the company convenient.
The company is offering the customers an option of giving feedbacks to understand customer
demand and improve their service accordingly. Customers today are becoming health
conscious and tending towards buying fresh food. Recognising this market demand,
Woolworths is providing their customers fresh poultry, meat and vegetables (Solomon et al.

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2014); and to increase their profit, the company is getting these supplies from local farmers.
The strategy that Woolworths adopted proved to be an effective marketing strategy. The
company’s strategy to enhance customer relation and understand the market demand has been
successful through their new planned activities and feedback system. Increasing
communication with the customers brought them customer loyalty, and their fresh food
offering made them popular among the health conscious customers.
The chief adjective of Coles is to increase its market and gain customer loyalty. It also
is aiming to increase its sales and to double its revenue by the end of one year. In this context,
Coles is currently offering their target market a variety of products in different price ranges.
The company’s place strategy is to establish stores in the areas, which have more traffic, and
in residential zones. Customer satisfaction has been their primary focus, and for that, they
have maintained a fast customer service and high quality product line. The management of
the company has planned to conduct a survey, where customers can rate their products of
various range, service and convenience. The diverse price range attracted customers from all
economic background. The fresh food product range and position of the stores increased their
sales according to their plan. Their fast service and quality product made a loyal customer
base. Analysing the results of their survey, the company is being able to comprehend the
current trend and demand of their target market, and trying to improve the services to make
them more customer satisfactory. The strategy Coles applied to make growth in sales has
proven to be successful audit increased their revenue too.
Evidence of marketing related success
From the very beginning, the marketing strategy of Woolworths emphasized upon the
adoption of a structural framework for addressing the needs and demands of the customers.
The marketing strategy has been developed for giving more priority to the consumers above

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all (Sutton-Brady, Kamvounias and Taylor 2015). Therefore, in order to retain its customers,
Woolworths has developed a promotional strategy of its own. The nature of such promotional
strategy is such that it has designed a public relation initiative for improving customer loyalty
and in such process, there has been an introduction of Everyday Rewards Program offering
exclusive offers and promotions (Grimmer 2018). It is worthwhile to refer here that, for
developing new strategies; the customer feedback section is being utilized in order to make
significant changes and differences by meeting customer expectations (Devin and Richards
2018). The major marketing strategy developed by them was providing fresh fruits and
vegetables that are being sourced from the local farmers (Lewis and Huber 2015).
It is noteworthy to mention here that, because of implementation of such strategies,
the organisational performance received new heights (Taylor 2018). The existing marketing
strategy also proved to be efficient in helping the organisation achieving its goals and
objectives. It is worth mentioning g that as a result of efficiently developed business strategy,
the organisation was able to increase its business value in the long run (Lewis and Huber
2015). With the extension of business growth, it added beneficially towards the process of
effective marketing strategy with the introduction of loyalty program, which effectively
engaged different customers with the organisation (Babin and Zikmund 2015).
Presently, the marketing strategy of Cole is dependent on liquor, food and fuel that
would attract consumers in the long term. Additionally, the organisation has been
emphasizing on the production of diversity of products based on the target markets from
customers belonging to different income groups. From the beginning, Cole has a strong
customer basis all over the world (Lewis and Huber 2015). Apart from promotions, the
organisation has successfully employed different media including radio, internet and
television for the purpose of promoting and advertising its products. However, in spite of all
these, public relations played significant role in the promotion of the company (Sutton-Brady,

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Kamvounias and Taylor 2015). Cole has emphasized much upon increasing the revenue,
increasing the customer base, building customer loyalty and thereby increasing the nature of
competition.
It is worth noting that, Cole has been aspiring to sell its products as much as possible
by generating high returns in such process (Devin and Richards 2018). For increasing the
customer base, the stores were located in residential and business areas. However, much
emphasis is being laid upon building customer trust and loyalty as a part of its marketing
strategy (Sutton-Brady, Kamvounias and Taylor 2015). In the long term, Cole seeks to
establish stores and supermarkets for improving the competitive edge among the existing
competitors.
Analysis and explanation
According to Armstrong et al. (2015), the success of Woolworths and Coles is based
on the effective use of marketing mix strategies. The companies had started from being a
minor company into two of the biggest food supplier markets in the country. The application
of marketing mix has provided Woolworths with an opportunity to understand the market in
which it maintains its business. At the same time, Coles applies the marketing segmentation
so that it can analyse the market and ensure that it can segregate the customers. Woolworths
have managed to be the fresh food people so that it can provide healthy food to the people.
As observed by Huang and Sarigöllü (2014) in the modern world, one of the biggest
reasons for a company to succeed is the application of social media and the internet.
Woolworths and Coles have been successful mainly because it maintains the company
websites and at the same time ensures that customer satisfaction be obtained from the
feedback collected from the customers. This can be considered as another reason for the

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success of the companies. The satisfaction of the customers and the responses provided by
them provided by them helps the companies to remain competitive in the Australian market.
However, Malhotra and Peterson (2014) are of the opinion that due to its popularity in
the market the companies own large number of stores in the country. Hence, it can be
difficult for the companies to maintain a consistent performance in the market (Sutton-Brady,
Kamvounias and Taylor 2015). Woolworths have managed to develop a structural framework
in which the company provides legal authority to the employees to be involved in the
decision-making process. In this way, the company have managed to improve the process by
which the goods and manufactured and based on it, the prices of the company is determined.
Babin and Zikmund (2015) is of the opinion that promotional strategies need to be
improved so that companies can be involved with the demands and needs of the customers.
For this reason, Coles have obtained to improve the public relations so that it can understand
the demands of the customers. The feedback provided by the customers can help Coles to
maintain its position in the competitive market so that it can compete against Woolworths and
at the same time formulate strategies for its personal success (McDonald and Wilson 2016).
Therefore, it can be stated that simple marketing strategies can help Woolworths and Coles to
remain competitive in the market.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence provided, it can be concluded that the reason for the success of
Woolworths and Coles can be attributed to the manner in which the companies have managed
to adapt in the business environment. The fact that companies are located in every part of
Australia provided the companies with the competitive advantage it needs to remain
successful. The application of marketing mix strategies can help the companies to understand
the demands of the customers and manufacture products as per their convenience.

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Reference
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.
Babin, B.J. and Zikmund, W.G., 2015. Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.
Devin, B. and Richards, C., 2018. Food waste, power, and corporate social responsibility in
the Australian food supply chain. Journal of Business Ethics, 150(1), pp.199-210.
Grimmer, L., 2018. The diminished stakeholder: Examining the relationship between
suppliers and supermarkets in the Australian grocery industry. Journal of Consumer
Behaviour, 17(1), pp.e13-e20.
Grönroos, C., 2015. Relationship marketing: the strategy continuum. Journal of the Academy
of Marketing Science, 23(4), pp.252-254.
Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E., 2014. How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand
equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132).
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Knox, M., 2015.Supermarket monsters: The price of Coles and Woolworths' dominance (Vol.
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Lewis, T. and Huber, A., 2015. A revolution in an eggcup? Supermarket wars, celebrity chefs
and ethical consumption. Food, Culture & Society, 18(2), pp.289-307.
Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P., 2015.Services marketing.Pearson Australia.
Malhotra, N.K. and Peterson, M., 2014. Basic marketing research. Pearson.
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit
from them. John Wiley & Sons.

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Solomon, M.R., Dahl, D.W., White, K., Zaichkowsky, J.L. and Polegato, R., 2014. Consumer
behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). London: Pearson.
Sutton-Brady, C., Kamvounias, P. and Taylor, T., 2015. A model of supplier–retailer power
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Taylor, M., 2018. Wrestling with Giants-A Critical Account of Supermarket Power and
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