881489 Master Thesis NDL
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A Restaurant in the Era of Customer Experience Focus A Study on the Significance of Core Competencies in Enhancing Customer Experience Master Thesis MSc in Economics and Business Administration - Cand. merc Management of Innovation and Business Development Dieu Linh Nguyenová: 124736 Supervisor: Tore Kristensen Date of Submission: 03.08.2020 Number of Characters: 170863 Number of Standard Pages: 75 Foreword & Acknowledgements The interest towards this thesis topic arose due to following reasons. My passion for culinary experience and culture learning is not surprising to my social circle. The love of exploring new restaurants and to share the memorable experience with my family and friends has motivated me to combine my passion and interest for gastronomy and my academic background for my final academic project. I would like to acknowledge the following people for their invaluable contributions to the successful completion of this thesis. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Tore Kristensen, for dedicating his time so generously as he guided me through the process of conducting this research, providing me with constructive criticisms and suggestions to improve my end product. I could not have wished for a friendlier or more knowledgeable supervisor. I wish to thank my family and friends as they supported and encouraged me through this process. Thank you for reading, rereading and all the helpful hints while I was editing my paper. Thank you! 1 ABSTRACT The customer experience is distinctive from a product and service, it is a novel concept accentuating customer focus in a firm's every day processes, while managing and developing core competencies to strengthen the firm's market position and enhance customer experience. Infusing this principle into business models results in customer-centric business models. The interplay amongst core competencies, competitive advantage and customer experience is, however, underexplored. Therefore, the thesis intends to analyze how core competencies can become a source of competitive advantage and enhance the customer experience from the resource-based perspective. The analysis of the case company Haidilao International Holding Ltd. (Haidilao) has been performed to answer the research question. Haidilao is a Chinese hot pot chain restaurant which provides customers with culinary experience worldwide by a strong focus on its customers. This research has analyzed Haidilao's business model, identified its core competencies, and investigated the significance of these competencies in enhancing customer experience. Consequently, the details of the role in becoming a source of competitive advantage have been analyzed through the resource-based view. This finding shows that the relationship between core competencies and customer experience is related due to the firm's nature of customer-centric business model and that the focus on customer journey and its touch points should be perceived as a continuous action to ensure the high level of customer satisfaction and strong intensity of customer engagement. 2 OBSAH ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... 2 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 5 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 PROBLEM FORMULATION ......................................................................................................................................... 7 1.3 THESIS STRUCTURE ................................................................................................................................................. 7 2. COMPANY DESCRIPTION ........................................................................................................... 9 2.1 FOUNDER AND THE BUSINESS MODEL...................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 The background of Haidilao ............................................................................................................................. 11 2.1.2 Hot pot industry ............................................................................................................................................... 12 2. 2 BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS ..................................................................................................................................... 12 2.3 FUTURE STEPS ....................................................................................................................................................... 15 3. LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL REVIEW ............................................................................. 15 3.1 STRATEGY .............................................................................................................................................................. 16 3.1.1 Core competencies ............................................................................................................................................. 16 3.1.2 Competitive advantage .................................................................................................................................... 17 3.1.3 Frameworks for strategic management .......................................................................................................... 17 3.2 BUSINESS MODEL ................................................................................................................................................. 22 3.3 BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION ............................................................................................................................. 23 3.3.1 Core competencies in Business model innovation........................................................................................... 26 3.4 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ........................................................................................................................................ 27 3.4.1 Customer Experience Defined ......................................................................................................................... 28 3.4.2 Customer Experience as a Distinct Construct ................................................................................................ 28 3.4.3 Customer Experience and the Customer Journey .......................................................................................... 29 3.4.4 Customer Experience Measurement ............................................................................................................... 32 3.5 Customer engagement ....................................................................................................................................... 32 3.6 Customer and Employee engagement and competitive advantage.................................................................. 36 4. METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................................... 37 4.1 RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY ........................................................................................................................................ 38 4.2 RESEARCH APPROACH AND METHODOLOGICAL CHOICE .......................................................................................... 39 4.3 RESEARCH STRATEGIES ......................................................................................................................................... 39 4.4 TIME HORIZON ..................................................................................................................................................... 40 4.5 TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES ............................................................................................................................. 40 4.5.1 Data Collection ................................................................................................................................................. 41 4.5.2 Data Analysis .................................................................................................................................................. 42 4.6 RELIABILITY AND THE VALIDITY OF THE DATA ......................................................................................................... 45 5. ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................. 46 5. 1 CORE COMPETENCIES ............................................................................................................................................ 46 5. 2 VRIO ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................................... 48 5. 3 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BASED ON SURVEY RESULTS ............................................................................................. 50 TYPES OF TOUCH POINTS IN THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY IN HAIDILAO ............................................................................. 67 6. DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................. 68 6.1 DISCUSSION ON FINDINGS .....................................................................................................................................