Why is Trader Joes such a successful alternative super market? If you look at their marketing plan, you might say it blows chunks and is not very good at all? In fact if you read all the marketing books by so-called marketing experts or go to their seminars and buy their tapes you see that Trader Joes, just sucks in marketing, in fact it is so bad that they should be out of business by now, but rather they are growing by leaps and bounds. How can this be, asks a marketing student in a recent speech I gave to some rather bright MBA Marketing Students? Well it is due to word-of-mouth advertising and referrals that is why. It proves that human interaction and normal topics of conversation do in fact have a lot to do with your business and how well it does. You see you can market all you want but you cannot beat the synergy of the hometown favorite of Trader Joes, but how come? Because you see it is not about only marketing, advertising, public relations and strategy, it is about the consumer and customer and their feelings. Much of this is simply correct observations of the reality of consumer buying behavior and what people are most apt to do when given a choice. A 1000 advertising impressions cannot equal good quality products, fair prices and superb service. For those who do not believe in Word of Mouth advertising, go shop at Trader Joes, while I bet they make a believer out of you after the first visit. Consider all this in 2006. |
