By Kate Davis W hole Foods is known for offering a wide selection of high-quality and specialty foods. Unfortunately, they have had to fight the reputation that their prices are higher than Safeway or Sobeys. Now this is not saying that items at Whole Foods are necessarily over- priced: Higher quality, better service and shopping experi- ence do come at a cost. However, finding what that cost is and being able to brand it in a marketing strategy is a tough sell. So that is why Whole Foods is taking a page out of the Wal-Mart book and looking to work to lower its prices. Bring prices down, and losing the “Whole Paycheque” rep- utation and nickname means Whole Foods needs to cut costs by operating more like a big-box grocer, cutting down on the number of items offered to shoppers and focusing on national distributors offering better price margins over local products. This of course is a major change for Whole Foods as its focus on local products has been a major
selling point of the brand with shoppers heading there for local products that they are unable to get at traditional grocery stores. Whole Foods Co-founder and CEO, John Mackey has been very clear that changes to the brand will need to strike the right balance with their customers. “Our culture is still very unique,” he was quoted as saying. “What Whole Foods needs to do is to take the best ideas of the tradi- tional supermarket industry and integrate them into our company.” Mackey later added,
“We think there are tremendous savings we can have that we can pass on to our customers with lower prices.”
Whole Foods is up to the challenge to change its image and price points, it will be interesting to see if that will get more people in the isles or force them to other local markets for products.
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MAY 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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