Cafe Since 1952, the Restaurant Case Study

Total Length: 871 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 2

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Concentrating on these areas will help attract customers from this generation.

Marketing

Customers choose how they want to learn about and interact with businesses. While the last 50+ years of the Cafe has been more driven by personal relationships, the current generation chooses to use the Web and social networks. Marketing as a result must embrace digital content strategies and delivery coupons regularly to clients over Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. It must also seek to create mailing lists that can be managed through hosted platforms including Constant Contact. In short, the Cafe must redefine its marketing strategies to reflect how its customers want to learn and evaluate the Cafe. The total experience of the Cafe needs to be evaluated from the context of enhancing the customers' valuation of it; not staying stuck in the past and coasting on quaintness and customer loyalty.

Supply Chain and Purchasing

Today the supply chain function of the Cafe consists of an inventory order list and a telephone call to food distributors when supplies run low. The Cafe needs to consider how to use system development initiatives to create more effective automated replenishment. Automating supplies ordering and inventory balances is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction over time (Ritchie, 1990). This approach to automating the sourcing and replacement process also needs to take into account the cost of lost sales due to out-of-stocks of key ingredients for the most popular entrees (Kator, 2007).
Combining these development strategies and the latest network-based order management systems will translate into less out-of-stocks and greater customer satisfaction as a result. It will also lead to more accuracy in orders fulfilled as these systems can typically be extended into the customer ordering process as well.

Conclusion

Attaining the level of trust with this generation of customers is highly dependent on staying relevant to their needs. Accentuating the experience of eating at the Cafe, making it convenient to stay connected to the Web, and using social networking sites to learn about specials all matter to this generation of customers. By intelligently pursuing technology to strength the customer experience, the Cafe can profitably and productively make the transition to the 21st century.

References

Bernoff, J., & Li, C.. (2008). Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web. MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(3), 36-42.

Brian Brus. (2005, December 26). Wi-Fi connects businesses to more customers. Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, p. 1.

Corinne Kator. (2007, April). Productivity, one bite at a time. Modern Materials Handling, 62(4), 24-28.

McKenna, Regis. (1995). The market was the teacher.….....

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