A Research Project on Service Quality for Tim Horton

In Canada, The coffee retail industry has developed in the previous five years. The franchises is major factor in any business to expand their business for future growth. Actually Starbucks coffee is not a franchises. So they are company owned stores. They offer a different types of flexible coffee, tea program and stores for rang of various markets, and Markets include healthcare, universities & colleges resorts & hotels and existing restaurant. They additionally can take into account qualified high volume or high traffic retail locations.

Depending on the execution and implementation of an expansion and its success rates, shares could go up or down in value accordingly, which then effects the companies’ shareholders.

Tim Hortons is currently recognized as the largest fast food restaurant chain in Canada. It provides a variety of products that are appealing to a broad range of costumer choices and the prices are relatively attractive for most of the consumer range. They prices are priced low and that’s why they are often favored by people. The company’s product line consists of premium coffee, espresso-based hot and cold specialty drinks (including lattes, 3 cappuccinos and espresso shots, specialty teas, fruit smoothies), home-style soups, fresh sandwiches, wraps, hot breakfast sandwiches and fresh baked goods.

The primary purpose of the survey was to ascertain how customers perceived National’s quality of service

• Net income for the year totaled $2.6 billion, or $6.72 per share, inclusive of $2.1 billion, or $5.36 per share, resulting from a deferred tax asset reversal, compared with 2013 earnings of $206 million, or $0.54 per share;

Internationally, Tim Hortons is fighting in a very saturated market, with a much smaller grasp on the market share, in proportion to its operations in Canada. Their goal is to expand by roughly 300 restaurants in the U.S. before the end of 2018, by enacting new developmental plans. These plans will be complemented by brand and channel additions to push brand awareness and penetration.

The last place you’d expect to have an identity crisis is Tim Hortons. How could one wallow in existential dread while the aroma of coffee and freshly-baked bread snakes itself through the restaurant? How could the lulling ambience of a coffee shop on a lazy afternoon be anything but peaceful? These are the exact questions I asked myself while a cold stare bore into me. It was a question itself that caused all these questions, one I hadn’t expected to be asked in a typical job interview.

Tim Hortons is a leader of QSR (quick service restaurants) in Canada and fourth in North America. The company has 3,148 restaurant in Canada and 602 in USA, 194 locations in the Republic of Ireland, 81self-serve kiosks in the United Kingdom and temporary location in Kandahar, Afghanistan. THI restaurants represents by standard restaurants, small full-service restaurants and self-serve kiosks.

Source : Adapted from A. Parasuraman, Valerie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry, “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research,” Journal of Marketing, 49 (Fall 1985)

Customer satisfaction and service quality are the two important components that direct anyone’s attention in every concept related to marketing, services, etc. (Spreng and Mackoy, 2006). In today’s competitive era, the success lies in

Starbucks has put heavy concentration on product innovation, new product launches and branding strategies and as a result, the company has lost sight of the customer’s wants and needs. Ultimately, Starbucks is not properly or correctly measuring customer satisfaction. They are basing these scores on characteristics affecting the product, and not precisely measuring the quality of their services. As Exhibit 10 from the case study shows, Starbucks’ customers ranked a clean and convenient store as the most important attributes of creating customer satisfaction. As marketing research is beginning to reveal, this should not be the only focus. Starbucks needs to shift their priorities and rank fast service, customer experience, and atmosphere as most important, as new studies suggest.

Mani, N. K., & Srivalli, P. (2014). A study on factors influencing Service Quality in Restaurants'. Annamalai International Journal Of Business Studies & Research, 6(1), 1-9.

Service Quality as described by (William G. Zikmund, 1993) “is the degree to which the performance of service provider’s matches customer expectations. It can also be defined as those essential characteristics of a service that measures its excellence”.

1. Analyze Enterprise’s Service Quality Survey. What information is it trying to gather? What are its research objectives?

Service quality represents a fundamental aspect of delivery, which strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty. In today’s global market a customer’s service expectation has to be met and exceeded eventually in order to retain customers as well as achieve success. Perceived quality of a product or a service is becoming one of the major competitive factors in the business world and has led to the innovation of the ‘Quality Era’ (Peeler, 1996). In simple words, the comparison of customer expectations with service performance is service quality. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable fulfilment response toward a good, service, benefit, or reward (Oliver, 1997). Both of these