Capitalizing on Organic Food

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Sociocultural Forces

Whole Foods Market is a company that has been able to benefit from the ever changing past and current sociocultural perspectives. And I think they will continue to find a way to benefit from these sociocultural changes, if and only if those changes continue to favor the organic and environmentally conscious markets. This is a very strong possibility, seeing how strong those markets are today. The risk comes from two separate trains of thought; one train of thought says that people will simply not be able to afford even Whole Foods Market’s value priced items due to the continual distancing of wage and market pricing. Wages, especially minimum wage, have not really increased all that much yet prices for goods have increased quite a bit. The value of people’s paycheck has diminished due to these rising prices and relative plateau of wages. The second train of thought would be that peoples desire for organic and environmentally conscious products might lose its grip. If people stop caring about organic food or environmentally friendly products, and start seeing them as a waste of time/money, then Whole Foods might lose their ability to market those products effectively. The chances of these two trains of thought actually happening are slim however, and not much of a threat, however they are still something to think about and consider in future marketing decisions. Currently however, their approach to sociocultural forces has been spot on and has effectively deceived the general public into believing that Whole Foods Market is concerned first and foremost with these issues. They do care, and they do promote this, but as stated earlier, its not their foremost concern as much as they would have the public believe it.

In the end, Whole Foods Market does a lot of good in the world with their programs and donations and sociocultural and economic practices. Ultimately, however, they are masters of marketing themselves in a way that is extremely successful in promoting themselves as champions of the environmental and cultural issues of the world while using that marketing to bring in a large profit without even batting an eye. “Whole Foods Market is a good example of a company that offers premium products consumers desire. Whole foods customers like the company so much that the company has made Fortune’s list for “Worlds Most Admired Companies” (Pride & Ferrell, 2014). And that is the entire point.

Works Cited

Pride, W., & Ferrell, O. (2014). Marketing, 17th edition. Ohio: South-Western, Cengage Learning.