Business plan for international restaurant on campus

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TABLE OF CONTENTS


SECTION 1: OUTLINE QUESTIONS

  1. Why data/ information collection is important in marketing

        Data/information collection is used to determine market change and to analyse market needs. Once the customers’ needs have been investigated, the company can plan its marketing segment and position, in order to satisfy and meet existing and potential customers’ needs. This can help to maximise profits in an organisation.

        In addition, data/information can be used to evaluate an organisation’s status, through analysing if the business is meeting the desired service of the customers with the actual service of the business. Such information can improve the existing service, hence the value of the business.  

        Finally, data/information collection can be used to predict competitors’ actions. Organisations can use the collected data/information to improve their marketing strategy in order to retain and attract more customers.

  1. How data/information can be used to make better marketing decisions

        Data/information such as questionnaire data, can indicate the strengths and weaknesses of current competition or an organisation that may be loosing sales can discover reasons for the loss.

        Such data/information aids a company to strengthen its weaknesses, use strengths, find unpredicted ideas and find a niche. It can also enable an organisation that is looking to start-up, make important decisions in terms of best location and pricing. Predictions can be assessed, where concrete information from research will clarify the targeted markets interests and needs, meeting target audience expectations.

        Consumers behaviour and purchasing habits can also be evaluated. Positioning on strategy can be identified and evaluated, checking the consumers most important criteria to the type of business.

        An existing organisation can review their service quality and find indicators for losses or where their market lies at the moment. It could be a case that their strategy is unfashionable with current market trends or employees service quality has weakened.

        Through such information, an organisation can gain a competitive advantage and approach a problem in a company, for example, check why sales have desreased. Understanding the customer will give more accuracy to marketing decisions.

  1. How members of your group collected the questionnaire data? What methods were employed? Any interesting anecdotes?

        Firstly, we prepared the questionnaire and then applied two methods to complete the questionnaires, with the aim of preventing bias.

        Method one: 5 out of 21 questionnaires were conducted with the interviewer filling in the questions after respondents gave verbal answers. The interviewer asked questions exactly as written, with all the options and instructions read out. Questionnaires were placed in front of the respondents to allow them to review the options before giving an answer.

        Method two: Other questionnaires were completed by allowing respondents to physically complete the questionnaires themselves, without any interaction from the interviewer. In this case, the interviewer stood back for support in case the respondent needed to query a question.

  1. What difficulties (if any) were faced by your group members in collecting data?

        An important difficulty that we faced was being rejected, as some people did not want to participate in filling in the questionnaires. Another difficulty involved open-ended questions not being filled. Open-ended questions were important, to be able to discover what people think and to gather detailed information. In the second method, respondents also misunderstood questions. For instance, respondents completed the ranking scale inaccurately by assigning the same number to different parts of question 11 and rectified their mistakes after they realised it. Moreover, some of the questionnaires were not answered.  As a result, such questionnaires were discarded.

  1. In retrospect, what could you have done to improve the data collection process?

If we gained another chance, the wording in some questions would be changed. For example, respondents usually did not understand and asked what we meant by the term “eating environment”. Moreover, we should have also expanded on some elements of the research, such as being more specific about our meaning of ‘cleanliness’.

In future data gathering, we will combine the two methods that we used in this research, where we will not allow respondents to fill the questionnaires completely by themselves. Additionally, as interviewers, we will not fill the questions for respondents, but will provide additional support to ensure that respondents understand the answering criteria, for example whether to tick one box only or to ensure that all questions are answered. This will prevent wrongly answered questions and bias. For example, in the first method we used, when the question about charity was asked face-to-face (see Appendix 1, Q.16), 4 out of 5 participants answered I don’t know”. However, we believe that without our direct presence, they would have said “No”. Without face-to-face introduction with the interviewer, respondent may have felt more comfortable to answer such questions. Furthermore, in future data collection, timing will be considered, since the majority of our questionnaires were given during lunch time, which can indirectly affect respondents’ perception of service.  

  1. What were the views of respondents on the questionnaire data collection?

Respondents gave us different responses: some of them noted that the questionnaire was too long, boring and difficult to understand, while others said that it was clear in its objectives and would have been a good tool to use if the opening of an international business was really planned. This gave us the confirmation that students really feel the need for such a business opening on campus.

ABSTRACT

This business plan is aimed at examining the potential in the market for an international restaurant to be opened on Loughborough University campus. This decision was based on the observation of a lack of variety of restaurants on campus. We analysed the marketing potential using a range of different theoretical models, for example, the 7Ps approach to the marketing mix and the SWOT analysis. Market research results indicated that quality and price are the most important factors to build in the strategy. Based on heavy promotion and low prices, we have built a penetration strategy.

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SECTION 2: MARKETING MIX – THE 7P’s

  1. PRODUCT

The product has been specified as the central component in the marketing mix, given that it offers the practical needs and wants of customers (Jobber, 2007). Products are used to tackle customers’ needs and requirements according to the result which was conducted from marketing research ().

Product is defined as an organisation that is developing a system based on satisfying the needs of its customers continuously. As a result, the customers are not being served ...

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