Guadalupe Company: A Case Study
Guadalupe Company is a fast food business enterprise that is located at the Simon Fraser University, and it is primarily involved in the production and selling of fresh and handmade burritos to its customers (Chan, 2018). This essay is going to use Guadalupe Company as a case study to analyze various aspects of a business by addressing issues such as its target market, the different characteristics of this target market, a well-detailed SWOT analysis of this fast food company and its Porter's Five analysis. This analysis will be based on the interview responses that were obtained.
Question One: Customer Segments and Its Characteristics
Guadalupe Company uses its high-quality customer care and relation to attract and retain its target customers who are the students that study at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Others include visitors to this campus, the existing staffs of this learning institution, and those families that are currently living near this campus (Chan, 2018). These students who highly depend on their parents for upkeep are either males or females with the majority of them falling under the age bracket of between 18 and 32 years. Moreover, the school staffs are financially independent and are also either female or male with the majority of them being above twenty-three years old. The target market of this company is mainly composed of individuals who have busy schedules. Moreover, Guadalupe Company ensures that it provides to its target customers high-quality and healthy products such as fresh and handmade burritos which are capable of improving the health and well-being the customers. Additionally, Guadalupe Company assists in meeting the wants of this target market especially when it comes to urgency (Ebert, Griffin, Starke & Dracopoulos, 2017). It does so by providing these customers with high quality and healthy food products within the shortest time possible once the order is made. That makes it convenient for this target population to take food within the limited time they have and resume to their duties.
Question Two: Strengths and Weaknesses of Guadalupe Company
The internal factors of Guadalupe Company that make up its strengths, threats, opportunities, and weaknesses can be best analyzed using the below SWOT analysis model.
(Piercy & Giles, 2009).
Strengths
Guadalupe Company has managed to attain both the viability and believability which form significant parts of its business proposition through the core principles and mission statements that it has put into place hence contributing to its current remarkable foundational strengths. Moreover, this company has put into place profound forecasting strategies, a substantial analysis of its current environment and the various factors that have the potential of affecting its operations. It has also managed to improve and maintain a high level of process efficiency (Chan, 2018). Moreover, the ability of the founders of this business to get help from the family members and friends enabled the company to reduce the costs that were involved in starting it.
Weaknesses
On the other hand, Guadalupe Company faces some limitations that tend to hinder it from efficiently operating towards achieving its organizational goals, objectives, and vision. For instance, there is a lack of readily available labor amongst the residents around this campus which affects the daily operations of this company. The inaccessible location of this company has highly facilitated that. Again, the amount of labor required in this company to ensure the successful completion of all the business process is quite intense when compared to the amount of capital that is generated in the course of operation of this business (Chan, 2018). Furthermore, the process that is involved in the production of the products in this company is very detailed hence calling for highly skilled personnel who will be able to complete the various precision requirements of the production processes competently. Lastly, the raw material that is required during production and processing process is quite expensive hence posing financial constraints for the company.
Question Three: Opportunities and Threats
There are various opportunities and threats that Guadalupe Company tends to face in its external environment as detailed here below (Ebert, Griffin, Starke & Dracopoulos, 2017).
Opportunities
Guadalupe Company can take advantage of various cost-effective incentives to attract the available limited labor in the environment through acts such as providing a free bus pass to all the full-time employees which to them is of immense value (Chan, 2018). Moreover, this company can manage to create an outstanding customer relationship through the help of its current situation on the SFU and through ensuring persistent high-quality products, consistency in the provision of products and ensuring excellent customer service.
Threats
The inaccessible location of Guadalupe Company makes it hard for it to access high-quality and readily available labor while at the same time face the risk of having its customer base reduced due to interruptions of the production and processing processes. Again, this fast food business is at risk of encountering errors which come as a result of the continued use of an ineffective processing system and process (Chan, 2018). Lastly, there is a continued hampering trend on the revenue and process efficiency of this firm which is highly being facilitated by numerous population swings which take place throughout the year on this campus.
Some of the most relevant factors include the large amount of both effort and time that is normally spent on ensuring continuous and ultimate optimization of the process efficiency of this company. Moreover, the company has done its best in maintaining the quality and consistency of the products offered while still fighting to minimize the chances of occurrence of errors through codifying the various production and processing processes of this company with the goal of putting into place an easy-to-follow, large and predictable system (Chan, 2018).
Question Four: Major Competitors and how It Competes
The below Porter's Five Model can be used to analyze the competitive environment of Guadalupe Company.
(Carpenter & Carraher, 2017).
Firstly, Guadalupe Company faces very stiff rivalry from competitors such Gawon Korean Restaurant and Bubble World Restaurant. Recent surveys show a rapid increase in the number of positive reviews that are made by customers who have in the past visited these two rival restaurants when compared to those made by those who have visited Guadalupe restaurant (Chan, 2018). Moreover, both Gawon Korean Restaurant and Bubble World Restaurant have created stiff competition for Guadalupe restaurant by selling the food products at relatively lower prices when compared to Guadalupe restaurant, hence successfully managing to attract a lot of customers towards buying their products. Secondly, Guadalupe restaurant has managed to build a strong bargaining power through offering high-quality products within the shortest time possible the moment an order is placed unlike its rivals in the competitive market. Guadalupe restaurant does not concern itself with competition too much but instead works on improving its capability to adapt to the changing conditions which make it have a higher bargaining power than its rivals when dealing with the existing customers (Chan, 2018).
Thirdly, the presence of well-established restaurants around its location makes the existing target customers of Guadalupe restaurant have a high bargaining power in the sense that they have the freedom to choose on which fast food company to purchase food products from and which not to. Fourthly, the fast food industry in which Guadalupe restaurant belongs to has fewer entry obstacles to the new and emerging fast food businesses which have substantially increased competition for this company (Ebert, Griffin, Starke & Dracopoulos, 2017). Lastly, Guadalupe restaurant has in the past few years faced the threat of new substitutes to its products being introduced in the market by its rivals such as Gawon Korean Restaurant and Bubble World Restaurant. For instance, the menu of Bubble World Restaurant has a variety of products such as snacks, toast, waffle, sandwich, marinated that can best act as a substitute to those offered by Guadalupe restaurant. Furthermore, the food menu of Gawon Korean Restaurant is composed of products such as pork, fried chicken, spicy seafood, and noodle soup which are very rich in nutrients and promote healthy living among people (Ebert, Griffin, Starke & Dracopoulos, 2017).
References
Chan, J. (2018, February, 2). Email Interview.
Ebert, J. R., Griffin, W. R., Starke, A. F., " Dracopoulos, G. (2017). Business Essentials. (8th Canadian ed.). Toronto: Pearson.
Piercy, N., " Giles, W. (2009). Making SWOT Analysis Work. Marketing Intelligence " Planning, 7(5/6), 5-7.
Carpenter, C., " Carraher, S. M. (2017). An Examination of the Reliability of a Measure of Porter’s five Factors Model among Business Leaders. International Journal of Family Business, 4(1), 87-90.
