Marketing cases Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Marketing cases - Essay Example Moreover, by establishing a headquarters that specializes in seeking to gauge consumer demand and key market trends and shifts, the ability of the franchises to anticipate and response to key market forces is exponentially greater than that of its closest competitors. With regards to whether Darden has differentiated and positioned its brands effectively, this is something of a two part response. Firstly, the level of overall success that the firm has experienced since it has transitioned Olive Garden, Long Horn Steakhouse, and Red Lobster from the prior ineffective models to what is seen today, the reader can rapidly see that the firm has expertly positioned these components to reap a vastly increased size of revenue. However, to say that these efforts have perfectly positioned the brands effectively would be to state that no further work is necessary. As a basic unit of understanding, although the firm has experienced a high level of success, there always remains a certain level of improvements that can further integrate the chains with the needs exhibited by a rapidly shifting climate of needs and desires among the consumer. Standardization is a powerful tool whereby a firm can seek to provide a level of expected service or goods to its customer across the range of its many market representations. However, although such a practice helps to simplify the consumer choices that might be acted upon, it portends the necessary danger of providing too high a level of standardization so much so that little if any differential is realized by the consumer with regards to whether one alternative is necessarily better than another. In this way, such a level of standardization can ultimately hurt the firm. With regards to whether or not the success of the Darden firm will continue to be realized, this is a question that a firm understanding cannot be integrated with unless the researcher knows key information concerning the way