KAPOW! Reataurant Strategic Planning - The Story

Chi-Hung Chien was about to begin an exciting new phase of life, Chi-Hung grew up in Taiwan, but came to the United states to get his education. During his college years, Chi-Hung fall in love with a local girl, married her, and applied for a permanent visa. Even though this meant leaving his family behind, Chi-Hung believed he could get home often enough to see family and friends while building a new life in America.
For the past seven years, Chi-Hung worked at a local Chinese restaurant. He studied the moves of the owners carefully while trying to apply the many things he had learned in college from his marketing major and management minor. Finnaly an opportunity presented itself. The biggest shopping mall in town had an opening for a new restaurant in its food court. The Chien family took out its life savings, applied for a small business loan, and obtained additional funding from their parents in order to open the new KA-POW! restaurant.
Chi-Hung spent a great deal of time in the mall prior to making his decision to open his business. Having studied the five steps of the buying decision-making process in college, he was interested to see how they might apply in the mall. After all, there was a considerable amount of traffic trough the food court. People stopped to buy soft drinks, snacks, and full meals. Some people ate with families. Junior high and young high schoolers would "hang out" for hours. Shoppers stopped for a quick bite to eat. Even old-timers visited the food court as part of their morning "mall working" ritual. Most wanted cofee, but the opportunity existed to sell tea to some of these patrons.
The most interesting part of the mall food-buying experience was to watch as an individual entered the food court. Some clearly had their minds made up and traveled directly to the restaurant of their choosing, whether it was McDonald's, Dairy Queen, Sbaross, or Chick-Fil-A. These national chains had steady inflows of traffic. Some of the local outlets had more trouble enticing the quick visit. Spuds Are Us, a baked potato place, and a locally owned taco place had some regular customers yet nowhere near the same number as McDonald's. Chi-Hung also knew many regulars were simply mall employees.
At the same time, Chi-Hung called numerous clients "wanderers". These shoppers would walk back and forth between shops, trying to decide what kind of food to buy. Several of the stores offered free small food samples to entice the customer to develop a stronger craving for a certain kind of food and make a purchase as a result.
The key seemed to be discovering how various consumer groups made food-buying decisions. Chi-Hung was conviced he could deliver a quality product at a competitive price, with solid service. He just wanted to make sure he knew his potential customers before they even got out of their cars in the mall parking lot.
1. Describe your buying decision-making process the last time you ate at a mall food court.
2. What decision criteria influence a family making a food court purchase? Would they be the same as those for mall rats?
3. Which group should Chi-Hung target, or should he try to sell to everyone?
4. Should KA-POW! Offer takeout? Delivery? How else can the company sell additional products?
5. Design an attractiive advertisement for KAPOW! Using the cognitive - affective - conative approach to influencing consumer attitudes. How can you modify the ad to use the affective - conative - cognitive approach? How can you modify the ad to use the conattive - cognitive - affectife approach?
6. In a group of three students, design three students, design three different advertisements, each using a distinct approach to impact consumer attitude. Compare the advertisements and discuss how each approach tries to influence consumer attitudes.