Eight young UWI 2010 Mona graduates in hospitality management were interested in opening a business of their own, rather than seeking to gain employment in a going establishment. They had learned about many New and Exciting food offerings while on their course of study at UWI and had set their eyes on becoming suppliers of some of these very different range of menu items to students at their very alma-mater UWI at the Western Jamaica Campus. The campus is home to some 300 students and staff on any average school day. Grabbing a quick meal and getting back to class on-time continues to be a problem for all at WJC. Food options on campus are limited to a small cafeteria selling snacks and a limited variety of not very healthy cooked lunches and a permanently parked lunch wagon from a popular fast food provider, which supplies a variety of somewhat pricey sandwiches. Other food options for the WJC population include a limited and somewhat unreliable delivery service by a local restaurant, plus the ever present option of travelling off campus into Montego Bay city or the nearby airport shops to purchase food. Typically traffic in and around the city is very heavy and mandatory parking fees at the nearby airport serves to escalate overall lunch costs if students were to patronize food outlets there. The group of hospitality graduates pooled their limited financial resources together and formed a small company “Foodi”. Within the first two semesters of a soft launch, their only offering to the WJC campus; a fresh fruit drink has done very well, on the back of a health and wellness trend widely evident among tertiary students in Jamaica. While the new entrepreneurs were very competent in the areas of food preparation and presentation, they had little or no business experience they were unsure as to how to proceed. Together, they could only come up with $100,000.00 as money to put into the business. Typically, such a venture would require a minimum of $500,000.00 for start-up. Could they compete with the nationally known food wagon on campus, or would the option of travelling off campus to purchase food make their venture unsuccessful? WJC’s enrolment numbers for the upcoming year were down by 10%, under pressure from a nearby offshore university. You have been tasked with the responsibility of evaluating the market opportunity prior to the group undertaking any detailed marketing research. Based on the information available to you in the case, draft a “Management Decision Problem for the students above. If you were employed to Foodi as a marketing research consultant, outline and justify at least 5 specific marketing research objectives your research would seek to address, given
Q3. Eight young UWI 2010 Mona graduates in hospitality management were interested in opening a business of their own, rather than seeking to gain employment in a going establishment. They had learned about many New and Exciting food offerings while on their course of study at UWI and had set their eyes on becoming suppliers of some of these very different range of menu items to students at their very alma-mater UWI at the Western Jamaica Campus. The campus is home to some 300 students and staff on any average school day. Grabbing a quick meal and getting back to class on-time continues to be a problem for all at WJC. Food options on campus are limited to a small cafeteria selling snacks and a limited variety of not very healthy cooked lunches and a permanently parked lunch wagon from a popular fast food provider, which supplies a variety of somewhat pricey sandwiches. Other food options for the WJC population include a limited and somewhat unreliable delivery service by a local restaurant, plus the ever present option of travelling off campus into Montego Bay city or the nearby airport shops to purchase food. Typically traffic in and around the city is very heavy and mandatory parking fees at the nearby airport serves to escalate overall lunch costs if students were to patronize food outlets there.
The group of hospitality graduates pooled their limited financial resources together and formed a small company “Foodi”. Within the first two semesters of a soft launch, their only offering to the WJC campus; a fresh fruit drink has done very well, on the back of a health and wellness trend widely evident among tertiary students in Jamaica. While the new entrepreneurs were very competent in the areas of food preparation and presentation, they had little or no business experience they were unsure as to how to proceed. Together, they could only come up with $100,000.00 as money to put into the business. Typically, such a venture would require a minimum of $500,000.00 for start-up. Could they compete with the nationally known food wagon on campus, or would the option of travelling off campus to purchase food make their venture unsuccessful? WJC’s enrolment numbers for the upcoming year were down by 10%, under pressure from a nearby offshore university.
You have been tasked with the responsibility of evaluating the market opportunity prior to the group undertaking any detailed
- Based on the information available to you in the case, draft a “Management Decision Problem for the students above.
If you were employed to Foodi as a marketing research consultant, outline and justify at least 5 specific marketing research objectives your research would seek to address, given
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