Jill’s Table: Digitizing a Retail Legacy Marketing Report

Jill’s Table: Digitizing a Retail Legacy Marketing Report

1. Introduction

This paper focus on Jill’s Table online expansion strategy. Based on Jill’s Table’s branding, product and customer base, it is recommend to expand online. More precisely, it should differentiate the product in store and online. Detailed strategy will be analyzed blow.

1. Situation analysis

2.1 Brief Introduction

Jill’s Table provides a wide variety of speciality food items, kitchen gadgets, cookware, bakeware and fabulous cooking classes. The company used to focus on the high-quality products and provide superior customer service and product knowledge to its customers through face-to-face business.

The owner of Jill’s Table, Jill Wilcox had an idea in mind to sell the business in 2023 and retire. Therefore, she expected the company’s value would grow before her retirement. With the expectation to grow the clientele base, Jill Wilcox decided to expand her business to online area.  If the company expand its business to online area, their customers would not be limited geographically. Because currently Jill’s Table is just a local store in London, Ontario. And its main customers are regulars in London area. However, if the company entered the online market, how to maintain the success based on the current customers’ loyalty and attract new online customers is still an issue to be addressed. Questions such as should the company employ different strategies toward store customers and online customers, how to deal with the shipping and saturated online market should be answered.

2.2 Company’s Strength and Weakness

Strength:  

1. From the branding perspective, the company is known as a trust, high-end with well-researched products and specialty foods. It is well-known in London, Ontario.
2. The company has good relationship with suppliers and distributors on a world-wide basis.
3.  The company has rounded product lines. It has special offers such as foie gras which is not available at its competitors’ stores and other products adorned with a Jill’s Table logo. Also, the company offer bundling products which are innovative.
4. The company has more than 10 year customers base with high brand loyalty.
5. The company has high quality customer service. Staffs are knowledgeable, being able to provide comprehensive information/knowledge not only about the product but also about recipe and other related ideas.
6. The company has a solid team due to high salary and warm supportive working environment.  

Weakness：

1. The company is a local store in London, Ontario. Its regular customers are limited by geographic factor. In other words, the company is well-known only in London, Ontario.
2. Scale of the company is not very big. If the company considers to expand to online area, capacity should be taken into consideration. For example, once the company start to ship products nationally, a 2,000 square feet store may not be big enough to meet the needs of the customers.
3. The company emphasizes customer service, it is an expert retail company. However, lack of online selling experience, the company should consider how to transfer its strength from a retail store to the virtual environment.
4. From the product perspective, some of the products are not suitable to sell online because of the shipping issue. For example, food is unlikely to be shipped.  Cookware, bakeware, and tableware most of which is made from glasses or pottery is costly to ship. In addition, as one of the company’s service, cooking classes are not easy to bring to internet since it emphasizes the interaction between students and teacher.

1. Competitions

There are three main kinds of competitors in this case.

1. Big-box stores such as Walmart and Canadian tire.

The main competitive products are cookware, bakeware, regular cooking ingredients. The strengths of these store are strong brand effect and affordable price. But their salesman are not as professional as Jill’s Table’s staffs. Also, they do not provide cooking class, recipes and special ingredients.

1. High-end kitchenware company William-Sonoma

This company is regarded as the biggest competitor of Jill’s Table. Since the products and service it offers are the most similar to Jill’s Table’s.

William-Sonoma’s main target is high-end customers. It provides cookware, cutlery, food, bakeware, etc. Also, it has its own blog to share recipes with its customers.

William-Sonoma currently has several store in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta. It also has nice website which allows customers to shop online and visit its blogs.  

1. Large online company Amazon

The main strengths of Amazon are its logistics system, huge customer base, warranty and reputation. More importantly, customers can view the reviews of the product to make sure the quality and service provided meet their expectation.  It focuses on general customers.

However, compare with Jill’s table, Amazon does not offer special ingredients, cooking classes and recipes. Also, its customer service may not be as good as Jill’s Table.

1. Relevant Marketing Trend

1. Easy and fast

Nowadays, people are inclined to make dishes which are easy and does not require much time to do. Convenience becomes more and more important.  

1. Vision preferred

Compare with literal cookbook or instruction, people prefer short video instruction which is more vivid and easy to follow.

1. Health preferred

People become more and more aware of health issue. They want to eat healthily, balancing nutrition and taste.

1. Segmentation and Target customer

Age

20-30 years old

People in this segment are relatively young. They are keen on using the social media and internet. They are fascinated in new and innovative products. Therefore, they are the most reachable people in this sense. And the market of this segment is big since young people cannot live without internet. However, the income of this segment is not high, they are more price-orientated.

30-65 years old

Most of the people in this segment are comfortable to use internet and focus more on eating healthily. Also people in this segment tend to have higher income so they might be inclined to the quality of the product.