Business and Services Marketing: Yo! Shusi
Question 1: Critically assess to what extent a theatre analogy is appropriate when analysing the service encounter at Yo! Sushi. How might the analogy provide insights into employee and consumer behaviour during the service encounter? (25 marks)
The services marketing nature shares the feature of drama, in that, participants focus on putting forward strategies and tactics to create and sustain appealing impressions before an audience (Grove & Fisk 1992). Customers/employees are cast in their roles as audiences/actors where every gesture, line, or movement is rigidly specified in a secured script (Mudie & Cottam 2010). When analysing a service encounter at YS, a theatre analogy is appropriate in various ways.
The actors are likened to employees at YS. Just as actors strive to win over the audience through their appearance, ability and dedication to perform their role well, YS’ employees also focus on courtesy, good demeanour, delightful appearances, and great service to attract new customers, encourage return of first-timers, and promote strong brand loyalty.
The audience is likened to the customers, whose presence is what gets the show going. The audience of YS entails customers yearning for fresh food that can be served quickly and at a reasonable cost, and they can choose from an interesting range of menu items (Wilson et al. 2012).
Just like the setting in the theatre, YS chooses appropriate locations where its services can be delivered. Wilson et al., (2012) describes YS restaurants as beautiful designs in premium urban locations strategically located to draw their focus customer segments. YS chose the design of a central-view kitchen surrounded by four dinars for its restaurants. Each restaurant setting is styled uniquely with design features including plasma screens, airline-style call buttons, and water points which can be likened to the mixing and rearranging of various elements in a theatre’s physical setting to manipulate audience perception of the service.
Performance at YS entails activities that will sustain the functioning of the restaurant with the customers, employees, and management coordinating in various ways to promote the role. The customers provide demand for food and services, as well as feedback via YS emailing system, which can also be likened to post-performance reviews in drama. The servers ensure quality interaction with the customers to promote satisfaction and return. The head chef orders food from suppliers thus ensuring the food demand is met. The restaurant manager schedules the number of staff to work in a weekly duration, thus ongoing performance delivery. The chefs portray skill and cleanliness in cooking and handling the food and thus help the servers to serve customers with quality, clean, healthy food promoting the performance of a back-stage production team.
Just like theatre’s auditioning and training, YS senior management ensures the hiring of appropriate staff and ensuring training to enhance the critical aspect of quality service. The CEO Robin Rowland is likened to the Director who stages the direction of YS through activities that will bring a competitive advantage to the show, for example, identifying YS customers and expansion of the restaurant in appropriate markets. Simon Woodroffe is the creator, who brought to life the idea of creating an edgy, informal, fashionable Japanese restaurant with a conveyor-belt system of ordering and serving fresh foods, and which displays quality of service as a key theme (Wilson et al. 2012).
The analogy provides insights into the employee-consumer behaviour during the service encounter by revealing that the understanding of consumer behaviour is important for modelling the quality of services, consequently attaining a loyal audience addicted showing high satisfaction levels (Bitner et al. 1990). Re-modelling for a quality encounter can be achieved through attention to details, training and empowerment of employees, improving physical surroundings, introducing efficient technologies, and encouraging the customers to push for a positively memorable experience.
A service encounter entails a duration in which a consumer is in direct contact with a service either through personal or impersonal interactions (Chantal 2013). The quality of service experience is fundamentally determined during the front stage customer-employee encounter (Glushko & Tabas 2008). Yo! Sushi bears a high-involvement personal services typology encounter characterized by high the tangibility of services provided (Palmer 2011). There is almost a continual interaction between the customer and employee from the moment that the customer steps into the restaurant, until the exit time. The customer-employee relationship is important because both parties share in the creation and continuance of the service (or script) (Guiry 1992).
Question 2: What are the implications of viewing consumers as co-producers in the service process at Yo! Sushi? (10 marks)
One of the unique features of services as compared to goods is the feature of inseparability between production and consumption (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry 1985). Yo! Sushi (YS) customers exist because there are YS chefs and servers to offer them food services, just as the employees exist because the customers are present to benefit from their services.
There are implications of viewing consumers as co-producers in the service process. The customer-employee relationship in service delivery at YS can be explained using the Servuction model (See Appendix 1), which is an amalgamation of service and production systems (Hoffman & Bateson 2010). In this model, the customer, employee and the physical environment are viewed as resources in the service production process by which their interaction can create or destroy value (Langeard et al. 1981). Customers’ judgement of the quality of service – whether in the process of service delivery or of the final outcome – can build or destroy YS’ ability to have returning customers. YS’ virgin or first-time customer segment (Wilson et al. 2012) can become returning customers if they perceive to have been welcomed and guided through the YS food ordering/serving/billing systems well which will contribute to the expansion of the business. Furthermore, these customers can become part-time marketers (Gummesson 1991) by recommending YS’ services to other customers. This contributes to the marketing mix of through word of mouth (WOM) advertising. The need to get a right first-time service encounter implicates for careful recruitment, training and empowering of employees as studies reveal that dissatisfied employees can encourage negative perceptions from customers (Zeithaml et al. 1985).
Returning/loyal YS customers expect high level of standards to be maintained. This is where creativity in service delivery should be emphasized, for example, in the way YS introduce new menu items reflecting the service feature of variability (Zeithaml et al. 1985). The service provider is judged by the ability to showcase knowledge and skills in managing variability and consistency in this can foster brand loyalty. Also as YS is running a service in which perishability is a feature, strategies to increase consumer participation are used, for example, conducting seasonal food promotion (Wilson et al. 2012).
YS’ physical environment directly relates to what its target customer segments expect. Lovelock & Gummesson (2004) discussed nonownership as another distinct feature of services. When customers enter and sit in a YS restaurant, they gain the right to exclusive but temporary use of the hotels’ space. In the moment of close proximity with other customers and chefs; as YS’ kitchens are positioned to be visible to customers, the level of interaction increases which can be a positive experience if customers judge the intangibility features of a service. If customers judge the environment as clean or behaviour of chef as outstanding, customer satisfaction is enhanced, leading to increased demand and profitability (Klassen & Rohleder 2001). This defines further the role of the customer as a participant in the economies of scale.
Question 3: From the information in the case study, identify what constitutes quality at Yo! Sushi. How could it be managed and measured across the Yo! Sushi chain of restaurants? (35 marks)
Parasuraman Zeithaml and Berry (PZB) (1988) define quality as the difference between perceptions and expectations of the services offered by the firm. At Yo! Sushi (YS), quality is considered at a multi-faceted approach involving both the quality of food and the quality of service delivery. Quality is achieved when YS’ customers are given a consistent level of service that meets their expectations. Service quality at YS perceived by customers can be described using the five dimensions of RATER (Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy, and Assurance) theory as described by PZB (1988).
Reliability is when the consumers sees the firm as dependable and having accurate performance on delivering its promises and service provision. This dimension is evidenced by YS emphasis on serving fresh foods. Customers come for the fresh food, and as such, YS promotes this element of quality by ensuring that only freshly cooked food is served. Food items that stay on the conveyor belt for more than two hours are discarded. In addition, YS’ management ensures food availability to ensure that customers are expectedly and continuously served with their favourite dishes. (Wilson et al. 2012).
Assurance is measured by the ability of the employees to be competent in a way that inspires trust and confidence in the service. This is evidenced by YS having servers/employees who have extensive knowledge of the menu and YS operations and can effectively respond to customers’ concerns.
Tangibility is the physical representation of the firm with regards to appearance of both inanimate and animate elements. Y.S focuses on aspects such as design and ambience to promote service quality. The environments chosen for YS restaurants are designed to reflect an informal, edgy and fashionable decor that matches the consumer behaviour of its various urban social segments. The kitchens are centrally placed and surrounded by diners thus the chefs’ skills are observable illustrations of quality to the consumers. Surfaces and floors are cleaned, and hands washed every 20minutes to reflect cleanliness as a responsive factor to quality.
Responsiveness is the ability to attend to customers’ needs in a helpful manner. This is evidenced by Y.S’ employees who strive to ensure that the dwell time –the duration at which the customer enters and exits the restaurant – is as short as possible, and doesn’t go beyond 45 minutes (Wilson et al. 2012).
Empathy is treating customers as individuals by showing understanding, good communication, and customized attention. Empathy as a quality factor is demonstrated at YS through, a feedback system by which customers can send emails to the company’s website address and the senior management responds to at least ten customer feedbacks per day (Wilson et al. 2012). YS can improve further by enhancing person-to-person interactions between employees and customers which can be achieved through use of courteous language when talking to the customer, greeting customer upon arrival and even remembering their names or issues from past visits.
These qualities can make the customer to perceive the services to be of quality, guaranteeing customer satisfaction (PZB 1988). According to PZB (1988), consumers rated reliability as being the most important dimension while tangibles being the least.
Service can also be measured using a two-dimensional approach these being outcome/technical dimension and the process/functional dimension (Gronroos (1984). The technical outcome of the production procedure is what the customer gets from his interaction with the service and this is analogous to the instrumental performance of the firm (Kang 2006). At YS, this dimension is demonstrated when the customer gets a meal after selection from the conveyer belt, or placing an order with a server. On the other hand, the process functional dimension describes how the customers perceive quality as the outcome is delivered to them. In YS, the functional dimension is demonstrable through the courteous manner in which customers are spoken to, or the functionality of the conveyor belt in regards to being consistently full with various kinds of food for the customer’s selection. Rust and Oliver (1994) expanded Gronroos model by adding the service environment as a measure of quality but they did not test the model (Brady and Cronin 2001; Ghotbadi, Baharun & Feiz 2012).
Measuring and managing service quality (SQ)
YS can use the GAPS conceptual framework (PZB, 1988) to identify quality problems and manage them to reach customer satisfaction and exceed expectations. GAP 1 involves not knowing what customers expect and this is a potential problem for YS if the management does not understand issues that will attract customers to eat at YS. This gap can be managed by conducting thorough market research and dealing with customer feedback (Shahin 2010), actions that YS has already embarked on. GAP 2 involves not selecting the right service standards. While expanding to other markets, YS should manage this gap by committing to develop physical environment that is in line with customer’s expectations and standardize their repetitive tasks to enhance consistency (Zeithaml & Bitner 2001). Gap 3 results from failing to deliver standards which YS can deal with by ensuring careful recruitment and continuous training and motivation to close the gap between service quality specification and delivery. Gap 4 entails failure to meet promises and this can be solved through strategic communication in marketing operations where YS can pre-test advertising and seek input from contact personnel in the new markets (Shahin 2010).
Although service quality is abstract thus difficult to measure, YS can and should look for ways to measure quality of service in order to improve its services hence promoting customer loyalty and retention (Kotler & Armstrong 2007). One of the ways is to use SERVEQUAL: a popular instrument designed measuring service quality (PZB, 1991). SERVEQUAL is based on 22 item-questionnaire weighed across five dimensions (RATER), in which perception and expectation scores for each are compared to reach at a gap score (PZB 1988). A small gap is an indication of high quality evaluation. In YS, SERVEQUAL can be adapted to feature items that define quality at YS including promptness, cleanliness, food freshness, food availability, and ambience among others.
Cronin & Taylor (1992) recommended the SERVPERF model which is based on performance SQ measurement. YS can also utilize methods that will help collect data about SQ such as mysterious customers where managers pose as customers; naturalistic observation/ethnograpgy; employee research; and customer panels from which the company can assess the seven criteria for good perceived SQ as described by Gronroos (2007). These are professionalism/skills, attitudes/behaviours, accessibility/flexibility, reliability/trustworthiness, service recovery, physical environment and reputation/credibility of its employees and customers.
Question 4: Critically analyse the capacity and demand issues that Yo! Sushi faces. How might it manage these issues? (25 marks)
When demand and capacity match in service delivery, the chances of profitability increases but this is an area of challenge to many service firms (Klassen & Rohleder 2001) including Yo! Sushi (YS).
A major capacity and demand issue that YS faces is uncertainty of demand patterns due to the nature of the food industry (Klassen & Rohleder 2001). It is difficult to always predict what and when customers will eat and the perishability nature of the services threatens profitability if the capacity is beyond demand (Crandall & Markland 1996). If less food is cooked, or if the demand was too high and exceeded the capacity provided, as demonstrated by customers seeing an empty or half-filled conveyor belt (Wilson et al. 2012), it can be perceived as an inability of the restaurant’s capacity to meet its demand, and would lead potential customers to seek the services of YS’ competitors. Y.S tries to manage the issue of uncertainty in demand by ensuring the availability of food ingredients, which are purchased earlier from the suppliers by the head chef. The agility of servers in ensuring that the conveyor belt is filled with food compartments is also another way to manage demand and the higher the number of servers, the greater the capacity when the demand is high.
Another issue in managing demand and capacity at YS concerns the inseparability nature of its services in that demand and capacity have to co-occur (Chase 1978). Since YS is committed to delivering fresh foods, defined as that which has stayed not more than two hours (Wilson et al. 2012) it is possible that losses can occur when the demand is low and food has to be discarded. The unpredictability and inseparability nature of the service is problematic in the sense that food can be discarded now and a few minutes later, customers step in, and increase the level of demand, just when the capacity had gone low.
Predictability of demand patterns can be observed during the service process (Hahn, Park & Macinnis 1992). For example, during lunch hours between 12.00 to 2 pm the demand for meals is likely to be higher than at 5pm in which the demand for beverages is likely to be higher than that of meals. Also, customers are likely to order some foods during certain periods of the year, hence YS uses promotional activities to boost the sale of seasonal foods. Y.S also uses ongoing calendar events at the immediate environment to determine the level of capacity. Such events include the premier of a film at a nearby local cinema, or a Saturday weekend when there is a rush of shoppers who will check-in-quick for lunch. Thus, being in touch with the local environment is important for YS to manage its capacity and demand issues (Wilson et al. 2012).
Y.S is expanding in various locales in London, and it is possible that some food stores will experience more customers streaming in than others, depending on the density of the street/location in which a store is located. This is a challenge to demand and capacity especially if large capacity restaurant has been created in a low density service area while a small capacity restaurant is positioned a busy local with many potential customers (Shapiro, Kasturi & Sviokla 1992). YS attempts to fix this challenge by conducting a background research of the location where it plans to open a new store (Wilson et al. 2012). The research is a data collection process that gathers information such as the number and kind of diners to expect and the profile of demand over a week. This information helps in the layout of the physical design of each of the restaurant’s outlet in various geographical locations.
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Appendix 1: The Servuction model
(Lecture Guide, ppt 5, slide 12).
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