TOURISM MARKETINGTM123

SWEET FLAVOUR CASE STUDY

Submitted To:Ms. Ruby S. Melchor

Submitted By:Ardiente, Mary Joy A.

Enarsico, Claire Baby Joy G.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The CaseII. Problem AnalysisIII. Vision and Mission AnalysisIV. Selling Concept and Market ConceptV. Types of marketing in service industriesVI. Recommendation and Conclusion

I. The Case

Vision

To be recognized as the best snack bar chain in the city. The goal is to

make people more aware of the healthy lifestyle and improve their quality

of life by offering them not only healthy but also tasty snacks.

Mission

To provide our customers refreshing drinks and healthy snacks for

reasonable prices. “Sweet Flavour” want to offer a healthy alternative to all

those fast food chains and other snack bars. The mission also includes

boosting the local economy as much as possible by using local ingredients

for our drinks and snack items.

Sweet Flavour is all about sweet stuffs from pastries, cakes,

sandwiches to coffees and juices- typically it is a snack bar but with a twist.

All products are of local ingredients. - Coffee and cocoa beans are from

Davao and Luzon, sweet potatoes and cassava flour for their pastries and

cakes. Luth’s business has been in operation for six years and is loacated

at IT Park, a very busy district where all people are in a rush 24 hours 7

days a week. Luth is one businesswoman is slightly conservative and

doesn’t believe in technology. She believes that manual labour makes her

products the best, she often calls her products “made out of love”. Despite

her principle in running her business, Sweet Flavour was a favourite to

many because it was a place offering warm hospitality and as it was back

then the only snack bar that provides varieties of coffee in the area.

Luth then decided to open another branch located just two blocks

away from her first/main store. The second store offered the same products

and service but was a little smaller (85) the first (115 sqm). Both stores

offered old style dining tables and chair (4persons per table), Spanish

open-style windows and a music machine.

Everyday Sweet Flavour opens from 9AM until 8PM. At 8Am two

workers per store are already preparing the place. Luth closely monitors

her two stores, giving them instructions and helping them get things done.

She does almost everything in her little business but not the making of

coffee, waiting or cleaning the tables and the store, just so she can keep up

with the customers’ in-flow. The new store was keeping pace with the first

store, with a below 30% income compared to the first (Php 115,000.00

annual net income for 2010).

Almost every hour both stores are filled with hungry customers, some

would really wait for their coffee others would just buy pastries of cakes for

take-out. Her business was doing well until other coffee shops opened. She

knows she can outwit her competitors for she believes that her products

like the coffee, cocoa milk, cakes, local pastry and muffins are beyond

compare. According to her customer feedback sheets the taste, price and

quality of her products were well appreciated and what was well

commented was the hospitality of the place.

Bo’s coffee and Gloria Bean’s (opened 2010) are just two of the

competitors of Luth. As months went by, her number of customers were

decreasing. This started to bother her so she decided to see for herself and

visit the two coffee shops after she closed her stores. Luth discovered that

both stores were offering almost the same products but were priced an

average of 20 pesos higher from her products and the pastries were not as

tasty as her produce. This made her smile, thinking “Hmmmm you can’t

beat my store… mu customers are loyal to me… “. She lingered a little

loner and noticed that they had more menu choices; service was well

provided that each customer has less waiting time for their orders, and

customers were cosily seated in nice chairs and were enjoying WIFI

provision. What she saw made her uncomfortable making her wanting to

leave. Just when she went out she was greeted by a group of young

professionals who were coming in; it took her time to recognize them. While

taking a walk to her store she realized that they were her loyal customer.

II. Problem Analysis

This chapter is to enumerate the problems and analyse in what way it

becomes a problem. It is quite noticeable based on the facts given on this

case that there are a significant number of problems that can be

enumerated and are needed to be solved. These problems are also

significant enough to determine the success or failure of the given business

which is the Sweet Flavour. To enumerate;

A. The menu- it is stated on the facts that Sweet Flavour serves all

sweet stuff, from pastries to cakes to coffee and cocoa. We see

this as a problem, first because it does not live up with the

business’s Vision and Mission to serve healthy alternative to fast

food chains. Though sweets can be good at times, but it becomes

a problem in the long term, consumers can develop variety of

diseases best examples would include diabetes, heart disease and

other obesity related diseases. Second reason why the menu is

one of the problems is the lack of variety. According to the theory

of marginal utility people tends to be satisfied once they consume

something, the more they consume the less satisfaction they feel.

Now, applying such theory to the menu that lacks variety people

would tend to find other alternatives to satisfy themselves. Thus,

the menu that lacks variety becomes a problem because people

would go to other producers (the competitors) to find an alternative

since they can’t find anything else.

B. Manual Labor – as stated in the facts all the products that are

served in Sweet Flavour are manually made, though this can be a

good thing since the quality of the products can be seen at the

same time it becomes a huge problem to the business. In a

businessman’s perspective you would never want a customer

waiting, time is gold, every minute that the customer waits the less

satisfied he/she becomes with your services. Thus, if the customer

needs to wait for a long period of time just for a cup of joe he/she

would rather go to a competitor who serves a lot faster. Second

reason why manual labor becomes a problem is because of the

distribution of labor is not balanced thus some are doing more and

some are doing less, with this as a fact the manpower would not

be enough to cater the inflow of customers. Thus, would lead to

more customers waiting and more customers leaving.

C. Store hours- it was given that the store hours for Sweet Flavour

was 8AM-9PM, though these business hours is good but too

traditional and does not meet the needs of the customers. We

think that this is a major problem; it was a fact that the store was

located in a business area wherein there are economic activities

24/7. We can imagine the profit that we can gain within the time

when the store is closed; it is also common knowledge that in an

IT Park there are more activities at night than at day. Thus, we are

not covering all of our target markets.

D. Old style dining tables- there are times that it is nice to relax and

enjoy the vintage designs of tables, windows, chairs etc. but, we

can see that in a place like IT park we cannot afford such luxury.

People are stressed with their work, frustrated with things

happening in the office and a lot more. Thus, they would like to

dine like a king, to dine with comfort. This becomes a problem

because our store is not offering that and our competitor does.

Simply said they are sucking out our customers by just offering

comfortability.

E. Technology- a good old conversation with friends is at times

good. But if you are to bring your work at lunch/snack you a good

WIFI service would be really convenient. Since Sweet Flavour

does not offer this our customers would tend to be more attracted

to the competitors because they offer such services.

III. Vision and Mission Analysis

Vision

To be recognized as the best snack bar chain in the city. The goal is to

make people more aware of the healthy lifestyle and improve their quality

of life by offering them not only healthy but also tasty snacks.

Mission

To provide our customers refreshing drinks and healthy snacks for

reasonable prices. “Sweet Flavour” wants to offer a healthy alternative to all

those fast food chains and other snack bars. The mission also includes

boosting the local economy as much as possible by using local ingredients

for our drinks and snack items.

In analysing a Vision and Mission statement there are certain components

that we must inspect before we can say that such Vision and Mission

statement is good. The criterion is listed as follows: Purpose, Strategy,

Values, Standards of behaviour, if we can find all in the out Vision and

Mission statement then we can say that we have a good one.

Let’s Start with Purpose, in this criterion we must ask why the company

exists. It is clear from our vision and mission statement that our company

exist for the customers and the community, and thus, it is our identity to

serve them.

Second is Strategy, in this criterion we must ask how does the company

pursue its strategic objectives. From our vision and mission statement it is

clear that to achieve our goal (to be the best snack bar in the city) we must

serve our customers a healthy alternative to fast food chains.

Third is the Values, this standard asks what does the company believe in.

In our vision and mission statement it is stated that we believe that we can

help our community by using locally made ingredients (coffee beans, flour,

etc.).

Lastly is the Standards of behaviour, this standard asks how does the

company act/behave in doing the business. It is clear from our vision and

mission that our behaviour is improvement-oriented wherein we are trying

to improve the lifestyle of our customers to lean towards a healthy one and

at the same time help improve/boost the local economy.

Thus, we can conclude that with all the elements present the vision and

mission statement of Sweet Flavour is sound.

IV. Selling concept and Marketing concept

In this chapter we aim to apply the concepts of selling and marketing to

improve the business of Sweet Flavour.

Selling concept aims to establish sales by undertaking promotional efforts

without worrying customer satisfaction. Some good examples would

include handing out flyers for information dissemination to establish the

brand. In increasing the sales there are lots of gimik to choose from, from

buy one take one to group/ barkada packages and a lot more. This concept

does not necessarily establish a long term relationship to customers.

Market concept is quite different on the other hand it wants to achieve

organizational goals by delivering desired customer satisfaction and

establishing long term relationships to them. The best way to know what

the customers’ desire is to conduct a survey. Now, to establish a good

personal relationship to customers, visibility of the owner and the hospitality

of the employees must be observed at most.

There are differences between the two concepts but, if both would be

applied in the business it would virtually harmonize and would create good

results.

V. Types of Marketing in Service

Industries

There are three types of marketing in service industries namely: Internal

marketing, External marketing, and Interactive marketing. By nature these

three are different, but if applied simultaneously it would create a utopia-an

ideal business.

Let us talk about internal marketing first, we can say that the best

marketing that a business can have is the quality of food and services that

they offer. It would follow that if we would improve the goods and services

that we are selling we can satisfy the customers’ needs, and thus we are

marketing ourselves to them.

Our customers are not only looking for the quality of food and services that

we are offering, they are also looking for a place where they are welcome

to dine in as a king. And here interactive marketing would come in, wherein

the interaction between the buyer and seller matters. A simple smile from

the cashier can make a day of a person already, or a warm good morning

from the owner once you enter the store. It can be said that the personality

of the crew matters to the satisfaction of the customers.

Lastly we have the external marketing, there is a saying that says “the word

of mouth spreads like wildfire” and we can say that it is quite true. There

are times that the word of mouth cam make or break a business. This

strategy determines the overall satisfaction of the customer, as we ask

some of the customers from some businesses they say, “If I’m satisfied

with the services that you have provided, then I would recommend you to

my friends”. We can only imagine the possibilities of a network of target

market unknown to us, a potential gold mine, and an untapped resource.

When this three is combined a school of thought would be formed, that if

we can satisfy our customers by the food and services that we provide as

well as the hospitality that we serve them they will bring more customers to

our doorstep.

VI. Recommendation and Conclusion

On chapter II of this case study we have discussed and enumerated the

problems that ere existing in the business of Luth the Sweet Flavour. In this

chapter on the other hand we would discuss on how we could solve this

problems according to priority. The basis for this priotization is the amount

of profit or increase in revenue that we would gain if such problem is

solved.

First on the list is to solve the problem on manual labor. Now, assuming

that a customer spends Php 100 per purchase and in manual labor every 5

minutes we can serve one customer, per 8 hour there would be an estimate

of Php 9,600 income. But if labor would be automated (oven with timer,

coffee machines, electronic mixers) every five minutes we can serve two

customers, it would be more efficient. There would be an estimate of 100%

increase in both productivity and sales per 8 hour.

Second problem that needs to be solved is the menu, first is to introduce

healthy options (i.e vegetable salad, vegetable sandwich etc.) for our

customers so that we could align with our vision and mission that we want

to give our customers a healthy option. Then, expand our menu so that our

customers would have a lot more options to choose from, a wide variety of

choices is nice especially the qualities of our products are already

established. If a customer spends Php 100 per purchase in a regular menu

then spends an extra Php 50 for the expanded menu and in every five

minutes we can serve two customers, per 8 hour of business there would

be an estimate of 50% increase of profit on top of the previous 100%.

Third is the store hours, it is a given fact that the business is located in an

area where there are activities are 24/7, there are a lot of untapped market

that we could get if we would be open 24/7. Thus, if a customer spends

Php 100 per purchase in a regular menu then spends an extra Php 50 for

the expanded menu and in every five minutes we can serve two customers,

per 24 hour business there would be a 75% profit increase on top of the

previous 150%

Lastly we must solve the problem in comfortability and technology (WIFI

services) we can replace the old dining sets with a new one for less cost

and then subscribe for WIFI services we could attract 50% more

customers. Therefore, if a customer spends Php 100 per purchase in a

regular menu then spends an extra Php 50 for the expanded menu and in

every five minutes we can serve two customers plus the 50% increase in

the number of customers willing to wait, per 24 hour business there would

be a 150% profit increase on top of the previous 225%.

In conclusion, there would not only be an increase in profit but also an

increase in patrons that would patronize our products.

In the end of this case study we were able to identify the problems that are

existing based on the facts given, also we were able to see what an ideal

vision and mission statement is. We were able to apply the concept of

selling and market that would align also to the facts given, we also pointed

out the types of marketing and given some examples. And lastly we have

given recommendations to the problems and have projected an increase in

profit by solving the later.