The new trend in today’s culture is to encourage having a healthy eating habit. Studies show that when people are at home, they are more conscious of what they are eating because they are making the food them self. While when they are out, they are less likely to stick with the healthy eating habit because of the tempting new food choices. Thus fast food restaurants do not offer as much healthy options available.
Most fast foods are targeted and are geared towards male consumers by labeling them as “dude food”. The food industry reports that 34 percent of men eat fast food frequently each week and only 23 percent of women would occasionally eat it. Fast food restaurants are beginning to have unexpected food choices to their menus to attract customers. For example the Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Tacos, which contains a Doritos flavored taco shell with the regular Taco Bell’s filling. Pizza hut has its cheesy crust pizza which contains five different blends of cheeses in the pizza’s crust. These foods might turn off some people. The majority of the consumers are the younger generation, who would want to try something exciting to have as a conversation starter. The targeted consumers for the fast food industry would most likely be the younger generation, but Dunkin’ Donuts wants to reach out to new consumers and expand their customer base.
Like other fast food restaurants, Dunkin’ Donuts also joined the trend of creating something odd for their menu. Dunkin’ Donuts also added an unexpected food choice to their menu to attract new consumers. This new menu item is a glazed donut breakfast sandwich. This sandwich contains a pepper fried egg and is filled with cherrywood-smoked bacons. What inspired Dunkin’ Donuts of this idea is that they have seen customers buy glazed donuts to use as burger buns at family outings. They want to expand their consumer market to families. They thought this was a great food item to target most consumers because it used in family events. This assumption that all customers would like it is wrong because everyone’s preference is different.
The sales are great in the beginning, but it is starting to go down because it is not exciting anymore. In order to meet the consumers’ needs and expectations, Dunkin’ Donuts should ask their consumers what they want. They failed to do this and the sales were up only temporarily. This was similar to the paper airplane activity that was done in class. The designer group had to design a paper airplane and present it to the customers group. The customers are the ones who decide what is considered to be the best quality. Some teams did not meet the requirements because they did not ask their customers what they want.
Consumers are the one to receive the product or service. They have a set of standards of the quality and service they expect to receive. Since most people are health conscious, Dunkin’ Donuts should add something healthy to the menu instead. This is what the consumers want and desire.
Questions:
- Do you think customers set the standards of quality of any product or service?
- Was it right for Dunkin’ Donuts to make this assumption that most people would like it?
- Should Dunkin’ Donuts have followed the health conscious trend?
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nched its web-based Quality Control management system known as HemaComply. With the implementation of HemaComply, unease and uncertainty are taken out of the equation when dealing with everyday Quality Control plans.
he concept of a continuousimprovement plan, it is important to constantly be measuring the quality of your product or service and seeing what can be done or implemented toensure the maximization of quality.
