Business Report On Pizza Hut Service Assessment Essay.

Your task in this assessment is to present a business report to the owner/manager of a service that you visited to give feedback on the service standard that is provided to the target market.

1.Your first step is to decide on the service providerwhere you have consumed a service product. You are to choose one experience that you have had in 2018 as a consumer of a service to analyse for this assessment task.

2.Secondly, you are to determine the target marketof that service provider. Determine the characteristics of that target market and their wants and needs in terms of the service you are examining. Remember that you are part of that target market. What criteria would you use for segmentation, for example age, gender, income, occupation, psychographics, family life cycle or other criteria?

3.Thirdly, you are to critically examinehow well the service operation uses the following twoof the 7Ps of marketing for its local target market: Promotion and People.

4.Lastly, you are to make two recommendationsfor the service you are examining. The first should be focused on how either its Promotion or People can be improved, and the second should be about the most possible service failure that could occur to the service provider, and a creative service recovery strategy to address the failure. The service recovery strategy recommended to address the failure should be reflective of retaining existing customers and potentially gaining new customers.

This report includes the feedback to the manager of the Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut is the leading pizza chain in the world with over12000 restaurants and delivery units worldwide. This report comprises one of the experiences at the Pizza Hut in 2018. The target market analysis has been made in this report. Further, the service performance analysis on two of the 7 Ps is defined which is promotion and people. Finally, it includes the recommendations to address the failures and retaining customers.

I visited Pizza hut Docklands, Melbourne on 10 August 2018 to have lunch. My experience was ok not that great. I ordered a personal size pizza and pasta. I wanted to have Pepperoni pizza but it was unavailable (Alden, Chen & Zhao, 2017). So, I ordered a veg pizza. Both the items were fine taste wise. Though there was a lot of variety in the food and I was not aware of all the options available by the Pizza Hut. I was not happy to eat thick crusted pizza as I find it has too much flour which makes heavy to digest and is not suitable in the long run for the health. Pizza Hut in the USA offers the option of thin crust pizza which tastes better. This option in not so common in the outlets at Australia. If they offered think crust variety, I may want to come back. Pizza Hut is also higher in terms of the cost. But the price is not an issue if the quality is served in the desired way. Another thing which I experienced was that I was made to wait for 40 minutes, whereas the expected delivery time is just 20 minutes. The staff was also not patient enough to tackle the customers.

The pizza hut is defined as a family product. The company targets the middle and high-class families. The people who are vastly paid and noble businessmen are the target market of the Pizza Hut. It focuses on the broad range of the customers. It targets the generation X which is vigorous in expending money on the non-essential things such as eating. The company also offers products for the vegetarians. Pizza Hut offers meat-free pizzas along with salad and pasta so that people can appreciate the best quality and food of the company those who do not want to eat meat. The company is also a decent place for the college and university students. The students offer parties at Pizza Hut which makes company to earn more revenue (Fang & Choi, 2016). Sometimes, it also happens that, it is problematic to get a single chair in the Pizza Hut because of its striking offers. Pizza hut targets market on the basis of several factors. One of them is that the company targets people with a higher income and food devotees who are all set to expend and enjoy the greatest meal. Other than this, X generation is targeted as they are likely to spend more amount on the food.

Target market analysis

The criteria used for the segmentation is demographic and psychographic. The general market segment of the Pizza Hut is the younger generation. The general market segment comprises the younger generation. It is also further widened by segmenting higher income and business class families which can expend enough amounts for the pizzas. The slogan of the Pizza Hut is “Now its time to eat more”. The central age group is 12-40 which is captured by the company. The psychographic division comprises people having a good approach about food intellect particularly pizza group. It serves the same products to all kind of people.

Pizza Hut is recognized conspicuously for the Italian products like pizzas, pasta and breads. It has gone local due to the increasing competition from the companies like KFC, Dominos, McDonalds. Even after producing the local products as per the company, Pizza Hut is still recognized for its variety of pizzas. The characteristics of the products are high quality served in sizeable proportions (Fromm, Butler & Dickey, 2015). People love the richness of the pizzas. The company is also known to carry out research and develop new products. The stuffed crust pizza is one of the popular pizzas. It also introduced natural pizza in 2008. Its one of the invention known as ‘space food’ which delivered pizzas to the universal space station and it used to be vacuum sealed. Pizza Hut also offers the meal combos which comprised customization features in which customers can choose veggies, toppings, sauces and more (Srivastava, 2015).

Promotion: Pizza makes use of advertising for its products in the local target market of Australia. The logo of the Pizza Hut is stimulated by the red rood building. The advertising slogan of the company in 2007 was ‘crease around the good stuff ‘and the modern advertising logo is ‘make it great’. The promotional strategy focuses on the marketing campaigns via print media, TV, online ads and more. The sales promotions of the Pizza hut also comprises redeeming of coupons after checkout, it helped in increasing sales figures (Freeman, et al. 2014). The company also conducts persuasive events on the social media and circulates advertisements in the newspapers, enclosures in newspapers and TV advertisements. During festivals, it promotes discounts and offers in order to attract customers. It also provides enterprise discounts and discounts to the special corporate customers. It is revealed that the local marketing relies on the local pizza hut outlet as they can use BTL actions like newspaper, posters, newspaper enclosures and guiding customers to the outlets (Saad & Badran, 2017).

Service performance analysis

People: It is a people oriented service brand. It focuses on customers and workers. Pizza Hut presented ‘Bell’ service where the waiters welcome customers when the bell is rung by them. The staff show affection for the customers, focus on hygiene and follows standards in the process. They also represent warmness and displays affection. The special events such as birthdays are celebrated in Pizza Hut and are tenderly welcomed by the staff. The company has the most courteous and well-mannered people in the industry (Harris & Fox, 2014).  

The recommendations are made for the service provided by the Pizza Hut. It should focus on the promotions in order to enhance profits and generate sales. People as a part of the 7Ps is responsible for the service failure. So, it is recommended to focus on the employees in order to show appreciation for the customers. Any problem faced by the customers in availing services should be first resolved by the Pizza Hut. Other orders should be taken later but complaints first. It is a positive aspect or the company as it helps the company to grow by making improvements. If the employees tackle customer’s problems effortlessly that it can better address the failure of the services (Hoffman, Watson & Preble, 2016). The people as a marketing mix can be improved by the proper training and the by enabling them with the updated skills. There can be a different department of the authority for offering training only.

The most common service failure faced by the company is regarding the complaints by the customers. These complaints can be concerning quality and the delivery time. It threatens to retain customers. The service recovery strategies are recommended to address the failure of Pizza hut (Payan, Reardon, Alden, Chen & Zhao, 2017). The strategies should be reflective of retaining existing customers and gaining potential customers. The first strategy is to make the failure of service safe by doing it in the right way. There should be a commitment of the top management to achieve dimensions of the service quality. The relationship value of customers is appreciated by upholding standards of the service. The total quality management should not be blindly adopted from the product perspective (Kashif, Awang, Walsh & Altaf, 2015).

The second strategy recommended to Pizza Hut is to encourage and track complaints. It has been observed that 50% of the customers who encounter the problem do not complain. This segment has a higher chance of switching to the competitor’s product as the company has no control over it. It is a healthy way to encourage complaint as it allows organizations to improve and learn new things. The process of tracking complaints ensure that there are no complaints left out. The technology is helpful in the handling of complaints (Kraak, Englund, Misyak & Serrano, 2017).

Recommendations

The third strategy which can be implemented is to act quickly. The customers who compliant want a quick response. They do not like to Ping-Pong around different employees as it shows shrink responsibilities (Majid, Alias, Samsudin & Chik, 2016). There should be a fast acknowledgment to pacify them. It shows a positive correlation between the fast service recovery with satisfaction and loyalty.

Conclusion

Pizza Hut is a fast food specialized in pizzas. There are approximately 270 stores in Australia which are particularly in the regional areas. The experience explained above at Pizza hut requires to make changes in its service. The target market is required to be identified of the Pizza Hut in order to determine characteristics of that market such as age, psychographics, family life cycle and more. The uses of the promotion and people have been critically analyzed for its local market. At last, the recommendations are given for the service offered by the Pizza Hut in order to improve people to be efficient in the services provided by them.

References 

Alden, D. L., Chen, Q., & Zhao, X. (2017). Building Global Brand Communities: Consumer Practices and Creolization. In The Customer is NOT Always Right? Marketing Orientationsin a Dynamic Business World (pp. 136-139). Springer, Cham.

Fang, Y., & Choi, S. (2016). Developing Customer-Based Brand Equity in Foreign Markets. Asia-Pacific Journal of Business & Commerce, 8(2), 91-125.

Freeman, B., Kelly, B., Baur, L., Chapman, K., Chapman, S., Gill, T., & King, L. (2014). Digital junk: food and beverage marketing on Facebook. American journal of public health, 104(12), e56-e64.

Fromm, J., Butler, C., & Dickey, C. (2015). How to engage Millennials: re-imagining the consumer as a partner, not a target audience, to increase engagement. Journal of Brand Strategy, 4(1), 27-36.

Harris, J. L., & Fox, T. (2014). Food and beverage marketing in schools: putting student health at the head of the class. JAMA pediatrics, 168(3), 206-208.

Hoffman, R. C., Watson, S., & Preble, J. F. (2016). International Expansion of United States Franchisors: A Status Report and Propositions for Future Research. Journal of Marketing Channels, 23(4), 180-195.

Kashif, M., Awang, Z., Walsh, J., & Altaf, U. (2015). I’m loving it but hating US: understanding consumer emotions and perceived service quality of US fast food brands. British Food Journal, 117(9), 2344-2360.

Kraak, V. I., Englund, T., Misyak, S., & Serrano, E. L. (2017). A novel marketing mix and choice architecture framework to nudge restaurant customers toward healthy food environments to reduce obesity in the United States. Obesity Reviews, 18(8), 852-868.

Majid, M. A. A., Alias, M. A. M., Samsudin, A., & Chik, C. T. (2016). Assessing customer-based brand equity ratings in family restaurant. Procedia Economics and Finance, 37, 183-189.

Payan, J., Reardon, J., Alden, D. L., Chen, Q., & Zhao, X. (2017, January). Session Number: 3.4: Global Branding and Consumption. In The Customer is NOT Always Right? Marketing Orientations in a Dynamic Business World: Proceedings of the 2011 World Marketing Congress (p. 134). Springer.

Saad, H. E., & Badran, N. A. (2017). How Successful is Fast Food Social Media Marketing? International vs. Local Chains. International Journal of Heritage, Tourism, and Hospitality, 10(2/2).

Srivastava, R. K. (2015). How differing demographic factors impact consumers’ loyalty towards national or international fast food chains: A comparative study in emerging markets. British Food Journal, 117(4), 1354-1376.