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Introduction
Kudler Fine Foods (KFF) has excellent reputation for providing fine-quality, unique and
gourmet grocery in the San Diego metropolitan area, and its recent value-added programs,
such as to include organic produce from a local grower to its product selection and
expanded customer service by offering catering food service, have increase tremendous
assessment to the company. However, in order to maintain its competitive edge in the fine
food grocery industry, KFF must assess the business opportunities that are created by the
change in technology, and KFF must also identify the generic strategies that it is pursuing
and tactics that would make these strategies a realization. Finally, KFF must constantly
scan the internal and external environments of the industry in order to stay innovative. This
paper intends to analyze KFF strategic management to help KFF maintain its status as
supplier of distinctive gourmet products and services.
Change in Technology and Business Opportunities
The advancement in technology has helped a lot of business create new business
opportunities, and more and more businesses are taking advantage of information
technology (IT) to improve business performance by increasing market knowledge and
raising the quality of strategic planning (Turban, 2003). For example, with the aid of
Strategic Information Systems (SISs), companies are able to gather information of their
competitors, known as the competitive intelligence, and thus able to monitor competitors
prices and performance. Competitive intelligence can be enhanced by using Internet tools,
such as search strategies, to make information gathering easy, quick and relatively
inexpensive (Turban, 2003). Armed with competitive intelligence, KFF would be able to
modify and adjust its strategic planning to either meet the competitions and challenges, or
better yet, to exceed those of its competitors. KFF may also use IT to monitor internal
performance and to increase productivity. For instance, if each KFF store is equipped with
its own computer network to handle all point of service (POS) transactions, multiple
inventory functions, maintains payroll and communicate in real-time with home office and
other KFF stores, a lot of time can be saved on generating reports and accuracy of reports
will be greatly improved as well. In addition, with the ability to real-time communication,
each store will be able to exchange information on inventory and other internal functions.
Generic Strategy and Tactics
KFF seems to pursue several generic strategies including Differentiation Strategy,
Customer-Oriented Strategy, and Innovation Strategy, Alliances Strategy, Internal
Efficiency Strategy, and Growth Strategy. According to Turban (2003), Differentiation
