Papa John’s Pizza is one of the few companies that provide their clients with high-quality products and eminent customer service at the same time. The incomes of the company per restaurant are averaging almost $1 million. Papa John’s Pizza was able to conquer the market due to several strengths inherent in its strategy and vision. The key three strengths are first-class ingredients, outstanding marketing campaigns, and online presence, and captivating employee training programs. When it comes to the ingredients, Papa John’s Pizza does not use frozen dough. Their competitors, on the other hand, use sauces made from concentrate and utilize frozen dough.
Papa John’s administration monitors the quality of the produced food and develops dynamic plans intended to enhance the quality of the final product. The online presence of the company can be characterized as attentive processing of the customers’ feedback. Papa John’s Pizza developed a marketing strategy that is focused on several local markets, but their products are targeted at international customers as well (He et al. 465). The third key strength is the training program employed at Papa John’s. It is aimed at helping the staff to understand the business, produce better pizzas, and provide reliable customer service. Overall, this enables the company to display consistent output which cannot be replicated by its competitors.
Nonetheless, several weaknesses seriously affect the company’s well-being. The core weaknesses of Papa John’s Pizza are the limited menu items, floating costs, and the local nature of their stores. The problem with the menu items consists of the fact that Papa John’s does not offer a serious product mix to their customers and they may stick to the company’s competitors. Moreover, Papa John’s do not offer sandwiches or “take and bake” pizzas. Even though the company has several loyal customers, they may lose a lot due to their price policy. For some reason, Papa John’s switch their prices constantly and do not offer special vouchers to their new customers (Smith and Wintrob 39). As a result, this may lead to a situation where the majority of the new customers switch to Papa John’s Pizza’s competitors. The local nature of the company’s business is the cornerstone of their performance. Due to several limitations of their stores’ locations, they cannot serve their customers as their larger competitors do. Overall, Papa John’s Pizza does not have as many stores across the country as their opponents, and this may seriously impact their profits and brand image.
Based on the strengths and weaknesses identified above, several strategic suggestions and recommendations can be made. First, the company should review their menu to provide their customers with a bigger number of items and guarantee that the variety of their product mix will attract new customers. The needs of Papa John’s customers may be satisfied with the introduction of salads, sandwiches, and any other products that are or are not offered by their competitors. Second, the company should concentrate their efforts on opening more stores across the country. Their major business opportunity can be explained by the fact that they did not saturate their business where a number of their contenders have already run out of options. On a long-term scale, Papa John’s will benefit from opening new stores and expanding its business. The third opportunity is the continued support of the company’s online marketing strategy. If Papa John’s listens to the feedback of their customers and implements required changes, they will be able to adjust their stores to the needs of every customer (Hollenbeck and Kaikati 400). In perspective, this may become the key strength of the company’s strategy.
Works Cited
He, Wu, et al. “Social Media Competitive Analysis and Text Mining: A Case Study in the Pizza Industry.” International Journal of Information Management, vol. 33, no. 3, 2013, pp. 464–472.
Hollenbeck, Candice R., and Andrew M. Kaikati. “Consumers’ Use of Brands to Reflect Their Actual and Ideal Selves on Facebook.” International Journal of Research in Marketing, vol. 29, no. 4, 2012, pp. 395–405.
Smith, Kelly, and Michael Wintrob. “Brand Storytelling: A Framework for Activation.” Design Management Review, vol. 24, no. 1, 2013, pp. 36–41.