Introduction
Firms communicate the value of products and services to the consumers to increase sales and to welcome new customers in their market. Marketing, research, and development departments seek to create, deliver, and communicate value for consumer satisfaction. Consumers’ rationality changes in time with relation to income, geography, tastes, and preference; thus, the firms need to analyze specific needs on a timely basis. The service industry requires significant information on consumer behavior, consumption trends, and market patterns to enable firms to plan and maximize their profits. Accurate data and strategic analysis help firms to appropriately allocate resources and determine optimal marketing strategy, guided by consumption patterns and products’ development. Yard House and Maria’s Italian Kitchen restaurants in Los Angeles compete in the service industry, and each applies different marketing strategies to conquer the market and retain clients. Strategically, the firms combine marketing and product development techniques, and this paper will evaluate, analyze, compare, and contrast their services across perspectives recommending where necessary.
Exceptional Services
Yard house capitalizes on market segmentation to augment Los Angele’s 24 hours economy and its population diversity. For instance, the restaurant has strategic operation hours distributed evenly over the weekdays and additional service hours during the weekends. The restaurant’s food, beer, and take out platter menus, serve the functional aspects of product differentiation and market segmentation. For example, Happy Hour, Lunch Selection, and Group Dining departments serve different products for different age groups and social statuses, guaranteeing holistic consumer satisfaction from a single visit.
Maria’s Italian Kitchen specializes in events and catering services designed to satisfy the tastes and preferences of the visiting clients. For instance, its Catering Loyalty Rewards integrates restaurant’s catering services designed to attract new markets and retain the visiting clients. Piccolo Trio and No Corkage Thursday segment divide the market into different social and economic statuses with age and consumption patterns influencing the strategy.
Overall Service Experience and Perceptions
The service industry represents tangible and intangible products offered to the clients with the industry’s success gauged by consumer’s satisfaction, derived service, and the tangibility spectrum. Yard House and Maria’s Italian Kitchen have unique competitive advantages, and each capitalizes on the products’ affordability to influence and persuade customers to enjoy their products. Consumers’ perception and ease of adapting to their products and services dictate the overall consumer experience by influencing the clients negatively or positively. For instance, Yard House’s social and economic segmentation approach establishes a strong customer experience by catering to clients at different times of the day and week. Its outlets in California and New York serve various beer lists with different concentrations for different social statuses designed to meet the visiting clients’ needs and after-sale services designed to retain clients.
Maria’s Italian Kitchen focuses on integrated consumer satisfaction from offering gift cards, comprehensive customer care, and blogging services meant to keep clients closer. By advising clients in “What’s Cooking” and “Maria Cares” segments, they incorporate consumers’ diversities of taste and preference and enable the research and development team to come up with unique products that meet their client’s needs.
Negatively, Yard House’s online customer care approach undermines its integrative measures to reach its markets in Massachusetts, Oregon, Vermont, and Delaware. The markets’ customer care organs curtail specific products of particular markets leading to uneven distribution of the information on Yard House’s market. Maria’s Italian Kitchen online order systems face technical hitches on weekends affecting the convenience and access to its various special events and catering.
Physical Evidence and Customer Experience
In the formal and customer-focused marketing approaches, place or the distribution access channel play a significant role in establishing a competitive advantage. Location and supplementary features such as indoor décor, lighting, sounds, smells, and background colors augment customers’ preferences while choosing their destination. Yard House capitalizes on lighting and sound to influence its clients’ stay in their outlets with sound plays a major role in its Los Angeles live sport and entertainment experience. The Grammy Museum trademarks in its dining and screen cinema outlets blend well with the youth who are the major clients. Maria’s Italian Kitchen focuses on Smells and shapes for their varied products in dining and outside catering. For instance, they customize the special events and catering segments to meet the clients’ color, smell, and shape, agreed-upon delivery, or during the contract period. For example, in their blogs and customer interactions, they offer customized food and services trials to new clients with the shape of their choice, color, and accompanying smells.
Specific business locations also improve the customer experience of the restaurants in that they are strategically positioned to offer convenience. For instance, Yard House’s location on 800 West Olympic Boulevard, strategically targets the busy section of Los Angeles coupled with its flexible operating hours. In addition, its outlets in other states integrated its market by concentrating on product diversities and business premises. Maria’s Italian Kitchen location in Los Angeles and its temporary outlets in Santa Monica serve the best interest of the residents by introducing and remodeling the Italian cuisine to the American market. Clients’ diversities of taste and preference, in this case, blend well with the continuous supply of Italian cuisine in Los Angeles and its outskirts.
Yard House’s physical evidence differentiates it from other players in sound systems, color, and lighting to supplement its six live entertainment venues, nineteen dining locations, and fourteen screen cinema venues. Physical evidence aspects of background colors, sound, and lighting work well across the states of establishment as characterized by diverse historical, artistic, and theatrical experiences. Their unique sounds and entertainment experience helps monitor consumer satisfaction and in the incorporation of new products to fit niches demands. Maria’s Italian Kitchen differentiates its physical evidence for concentrating on the blending of the final products to meet personal experiences, tastes, and preferences. The integration of their services to a smaller market segment gives the firm smaller market scope and in-depth personal-touch to its clients. Smaller market scope improves on service delivery and in addressing customer queries in cases of dissatisfaction or deterioration of services offered.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Customer experience in the service industry identifies business’ prospects and their ability to meet diverse clients’ needs and expectations. Improving customer experience requires timely evaluation of consumption patterns and trends and incorporation of clients’ diverse and changing tastes and preferences for the optimal product development. For example, Yard House needs to improve its client management strategies by streamlining business-client interactions at the regional level and integrating them to fit its new market demand. Timely response to social media interactions between the office and the clients improve the personal touch between the clients and the firm and promote clients’ loyalty to the product. Maria’s Italian Kitchen needs to streamline its menus and product promotions to incorporate effective market segmentation and restructure its gift cards and online ordering system for optimal market coverage and scope of its operations.