Cohesion Case Study: The Broadway Café
I recently inherited the Broadway Café shop from my grandfather in the downtown, offering various types of specialized teas, coffee, full-service bakery, soups, salads, and homemade sandwiches. The café has long been a center of attraction to many customers in my hometown. However, currently, the number of customers has drastically reduced. The most reason the failure is due to its inability to match the business strategies and requirements in the 21st century is that the café is still operating with the traditional approach. Hence, there is a need to restructure Broadway café and incorporate more appropriate strategies in the twenty-first-century.
Part One; Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage denotes the underlying factors that allow any business to manufacture/produce more superior goods in terms of quality and price compared to its competitors. Having a tremendous competitive advantage means that the business will have an increased sales margin than its competitors. In the case of Broadway café, competitive advantage is the first step that needs to be implemented to help it withstand the high competition from Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Aroma Coffee, and New Moon Café experienced in the twenty-first century (Kuncoro, Wuryanti & Suriani, pp. 186-192). The Café industry is amongst the industries characterized by high competition from its rivals. Failure to implement a competitive advantage on the Broadway café would make it lose the customers’ attraction. This, in turn, would lead to a reduction in the sales and the possible total profit earned by the café.
Porter’s Five Forces analysis is critical to consider while implementing a competitive advantage for the Broadway café, including the threat of the new entrants, buyers’ bargaining power, suppliers’ bargaining power, the threat of product substitution, and the presence of industry competition. The Broadway café faces a limited threat from suppliers’ power since there are various suppliers from which the café can order its products (Kuncoro, Wuryanti & Suriani, pp. 186-192). The café can always shift from one supplier to another with ease, given that the supplier can meet its expectations and standards. However, this yields a significant threat since new cafes can find their way in the market with ease. This, in turn, attracts new competitors in the industry, such as the Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, and tea spots. Hence, Broadway café needs to create a price barrier to limit new entrants’ threats by maintaining artificially low prices. The threat of product substitution is the other force that is having a negative effect on the performance of Broadway café; there is a wide range of products offered by other cafes that can substitute products offered by the Broadway café. This can, in turn, hurt the total revenues earned by the café. However, the café can supersede this menace since its brands are produced using a certain formula only known by the family members. Hence, this would reduce the threat of substitution by other products since competitors cannot be able to produce the exact product manufactured by the Broadway café. Also, the Broadway café is facing a significant threat of the Buyer bargaining power. The consumer bargaining power is high since there is a wide of cafes in the industry offering similar products. Hence customers have a wide range of options for choosing their products from other restaurants. One-way Broadway café can escape this threat by creating a customer loyalty program. Alternatively, this is done by specializing in types of meals that are not offered by other restaurants (competitors). That is offering a niche dining that is distinct from the competitors.
The Broadway café needs to focus more on implementing differentiation and cost leadership strategies, such as making a temporary reduction of the price below the price charged by the competitors. This would play a critical role in mitigating the competition and threat of substitutes since most customers would choose the lower price offered by the café compared to the high price charged by the competitors for the same products. Moreover, the café can gain a competitive advantage in the industry by carrying out its product differentiation (Kuncoro, Wuryanti & Suriani, pp. 186-192). Implementing a product differentiation strategy will make the products more attractive than the products offered by the competitors. This, in turn, will play a crucial role in attracting new customers in the café and help create a competitive advantage for the café. Moreover, offering a high-quality product and including extra activities such as customer entertainment will play a critical role in building customer loyalty, which will create a competitive advantage for the industry.
Part Two; Customer Relation Management
Customer Relationship Management refers to a combination of the strategies, technologies, and practices that firms use to help manage and examine customer interactions and customer life cycle to raise customer services and customer retention as increasing sales. Broadway Café concentrates more on ensuring a good relationship with its customers. One of the significant ways that Broadway Café can improve its customer’s relationship is by ensuring that it meets customer expectations, needs, and wants. The café needs to implement more customer relationship management (CRM) tactics that are more customer-centric (Somma, Ryan & Cyril). To achieve this, the café needs to train its employees, particularly the waiters and waitress, for excellent communication skills and appropriate ways to interact with the customers.
Moreover, the café should always seek to record more information from customers regarding their satisfaction and proposals. This will, in turn, enable the customer to develop their service offering strategies to best suit their customer’s wants, needs, and expectations. Based on the customer feedback, the café can also improve service delivery methods to match customer expectations (Somma, Ryan & Cyril). Moreover, collecting customers’ profiles can also be a critical strategy for the café to increase customer relationship management. For instance, knowing the hometown or the location where the customer is coming from is vital for the café. It will be able to identify the best locations to locate their business to minimize the distance traveled by the consumers. This will, in turn, create a positive impact to the café by enabling it to be better suited in the twenty-first century.
Incorporation of entertainment activities such as poetry slams, concerts, and various events would play a significant role in appealing to consumers. Also, this would allow the customers to interact and get to know each other. Such activities would please the customers and hence attract more customers. An increase in customers would lead to an increase in sales and increase the total profit yielded by the Broadway café.
Part Three; Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management refers to the management of the flow of services and goods. It incorporates the process of transforming raw materials into final products to deliver the final commodities to customers. Most of the cafes in the twenty-first century have included technological and innovative techniques in supply chain management. This has enabled them to improve meeting consumer demands and hasten the entire production process. Hence, to promote the supply chain management, the Broadway café should incorporate technology that would increase the rate of converting raw material to final products and increase the rate at which the products reach the consumers (Somma, Ryan & Cyril).
Moreover, Broadway café needs to implement superior and innovative supply chain management techniques to ensure that customers receive the products as fast as possible. This will also enable the café to meet the increasing consumer demand. For instance, incorporating app ordering for the café can increase the rate at which the consumers get served with the products they order. It can highly reduce the waiting time, which is experienced in the café due to the use of traditional methods of serving the customers and production. Most consumers find it hand to get coffee in the morning due to the long waiting line before he/she can be served. This because it is tedious and time-consuming, making some of them late for the work. Hence, creating an ordering app could be very helpful for the café since it would eliminate the congestion experienced in the restaurant during the morning hours by the customers. This is because customers will be able to make their orders using phones without necessarily queuing while waiting to be served.
Moreover, incorporating an ordering app in the café could have a significant advantage to the consumers since it would make them more comfortable while making their order since there will be no congestion. This, in turn, will attract more consumers hence raising consumption and ultimately raising the overall revenue realized by the Broadway café (Somma, Ryan & Cyril). The restaurant can also implement an online ordering technique where customers can order from their homes, and their orders get delivered within the shortest time possible. Adopting new technological tools in the production and selling such as ordering app can play a significant role in enabling the café to match the twenty-first ways of running a business.
Part Four; Business Intelligence
Business intelligence refers to a technology-driven procedure for examining data and bestowing actionable information, which assists managers and executives in making well-versed business decisions. Most of the businesses in the twenty-first century have adopted technology-driven procedures necessary at highlighting the critical information that managers and executives can use to make effective decisions while running the business. Most of the dimensions used can help identify customers, behaviors, spending patterns, and buying preferences. Broadway café could not enjoy such choices since there were little technological developments during the period my grandfather initiated the firm (Arnott et al., pp. 58-68). The technology-driven procedures in a business help identify the most crucial factors that determine its growth and the less important factors in the business This, in turn, enables the managers and executives to make the right decisions based on such information. For instance, the technology-driven procedures can help rate the product price, quantity sold, order time, payment method, weather, and season from the most significant determinant of the business growth to the least important for the business growth. This, in turn, helps the managers and executives identify the fields they need to emphasize and the fields they need to put less emphasis on. Incorporating such technology-procedure in the Broadway café would play a vital role in proper decision making for the café that would, in turn, facilitate its growth. Moreover, such technology procedures would help Broad café compete effectively with other businesses in the twenty-first century.
Part Five; Ethics
Ethics in business refers to suitable business practices and policies regarding the possibly controversial subjects such as bribery, fiduciary responsibilities, and discrimination. The Broadway café has not initiated the necessary hierarchal rule; instead, my grandfather used to oversee every activity being conducted in the café. For instance, the production activities, supply, renovations, managing employees, and other various activities. This was a tedious activity, and sometimes he could make errors. However, currently, most businesses have subdivided their businesses into multiple departments such as the production departments, managerial departments, Research and development, Human resource management, accounting, Finance, and Purchasing departments (Ciulla & Joanne, pp. 165-175). This makes it easier for the firms and organizations to avoid occurrences of bribery, mishandling of the business funds, discrimination, and other misconducts in any business. With the proper running of the business, more profit is realized, which facilitates faster growth of the business.
Hence, the Broadway café needs to be subdivided into various departments such as the human resource department, finance department, purchasing department, and managerial department. The accounting department needs to have its leader ensure that funds are appropriately recorded in the accounts and that all funds are appropriately allocated in each department. This would make it easier to regulate costs in the café and adequately determine the overall revenue received per a particular period (Ciulla & Joanne, pp. 165-175). Moreover, various departments’ existence will make it easier for the management of the café and facilities its growth. Furthermore, a good governance structure will enable Broadway café to function more efficiently and mitigate the occurrence of unnecessary risks. This, in turn, will make it match with the current business trends in the twenty-first century.
Part Six; Networks, Telecommunications, and Wireless Computing
Currently, most of the individuals worldwide are users of mobile such as blackberries, phones, Ipads, Ipods, and iPhones. Hence, the sense that most of the individuals across the globe use the mobiles and other improved technological devices meant to convey information is an excellent indication of the importance of that firm, and businesses are significantly embracing this device whenever they are rendering services to their customers. For Broadway to successfully and better fit in the twenty-first century, it needs to adopt the technological tools that are often used by their customers (Somma, Ryan & Cyril). For instance, with the availability of telecommunication, the café can transmit data to a large number of consumers through the use of SMS, MMS, Emails, and other social media platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook. Mostly, the café can benefit from this technological platform whenever it is conducting its marketing activities, such as when informing its loyal and potential customers regarding the existence of a new service or new brand of their commodities. This strategy is more effective and convenient compared to traditional methods used to reach the customers. Moreover, incorporating a digital registration platform (m-coupons) for the customers and the employees is more effective than traditional paper coupons since it saves time and minimizes the costs.
Additionally, implementing digital advertisement strategies such as Websites, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram is effective since it would help reach more customers, increasing the awareness of the café, expanding the number of customers. This, in turn, will enable the café to successfully switch to the twenty-first century, where most of the business is characterized by technological advancements and tools that facilitate service delivery. Moreover, with the use of digital platforms, Broadway café will be able to collect customers’ reviews regarding the effectiveness of services effectively. This will, in turn, make it easy for the cafe always to ensure that their customers are receiving the quality products which match their expectations.
Conclusion
By restructuring the competitive advantage, customer relation management, supply chain management, ethics, Business intelligence and Networks, Telecommunication, and Wireless Computing, Broadway café would be able to match the twenty-first businesses. The incorporation of cost leadership strategy and differentiation would significantly assist the café in attaining a competitive advantage in the twenty-first century. Moreover, having a proper customer relationship management would attract more customers and adds in the establishment of loyal customers. An increase in customers would increase sales and raise the total profit earned by the café, thus facilitating its growth in the twenty-first century. Additionally, unlike in the traditional era, the adoption of superior technology would also play a crucial role in increasing customer service and facilitating faster production. Furthermore, the adoption of technological tools such as social media platforms to make advertisements would enable the café to reach more of its consumers and probable consumers. The technological tools such as emails and SMS would also allow the restaurant to communicate more easily with its employees and customers. This would, in turn, make it the café in pace with the growth with other businesses in the twenty-first century.
Work Cited
Arnott, David, Felix Lizama, and Yutong Song. “Patterns of business intelligence systems use in organizations.” Decision Support Systems 97 (2017): 58-68.
Ciulla, Joanne B. “Is Business Ethics Getting Better? Business Ethics and Business History.” The Search for Ethics in Leadership, Business, and Beyond. Springer, Cham, 2020. 165-175.
Kuncoro, Wuryanti, and Wa Ode Suriani. “Achieving sustainable competitive advantage through product innovation and market driving.” Asia Pacific Management Review 23.3 (2018): 186-192.
Somma, Ryan, and Cyril Shepherd. “Cohesion Case Study for the Broadway Cafe.” (2008).