Although most of the case studies in this book are based on real companies, ‘Rapid Pizza’
is a fictional company. However, the case reflects the pressures acting on commercial take-away operations.
Rapid Pizza is a medium sized chain of pizza takeaway outlets located in the Midlands.
The chain is modelled on bigger, well-established names, such as Perfect Pizza. Customers can ring up and order a home-delivered pizza from a menu that is distributed to local homes. Rapid Pizza does the usual choice of popular pizzas, with no particular pretension to cater for any niche group. Its best seller is the ‘Rapid Speciale’, a spicy chicken based pizza with a range of cheese toppings.
The marketing manager of Rapid Pizza, Colin McVie, has just had a conversation with an old friend, Dan Smith, who happens to be a direct marketing expert. His friend was very enthusiastic about Rapid Pizza’s possible use of direct marketing, which surprised Colin, as he had not really given it much thought. He had a website that, to be honest, was a bit under-developed but it did have a map showing people where the restaurant was.
Rapid Pizza uses ‘door‑to‑door’ leafleting to distribute its promotional literature through the locality. This includes a menu, a map showing where the outlet is, and a phone number for ordering any time until midnight, seven days a week. Incentives to phone are periodically offered, again through door drops, distributed via the local freesheet. Incentives include an ‘order two and get one free’ offer, ‘free garlic bread with any order over £10’, and similar promotions.
The busiest times for the takeaway business are early and late evenings, and in particular Friday and Saturday nights. Most of its customers are in their twenties or thirties, with enough expendable income to afford not to bother cooking occasionally. In order to qualify for the takeaway service, customers have to live within a one mile radius of the outlet. Each outlet caters for about 7,000 households.
The main features of Colin’s business are as follows:
● The top priorities for consumers are hot, tasty pizzas, fast delivery and reasonable prices.
● Some consumers are remarkably regular with their orders, wanting exactly the same items each time they phone. Some of Colin’s staff have got to know the most regular customers quite well.
● When customers call in to order their pizza they leave their name and address as a natural part of the process. Their transaction details are easily taken and can be kept on a computer based database in each outlet. At present, these transaction details are used only for accounting and stock ordering.
● Menu changes are executed quite regularly. Colin believes that these help to keep customers interested, and are an excuse to launch fresh marketing initiatives.
● Occasional monitoring of the website showed that Web visitors were on the increase, but Colin was not sure whether these visitors went on to buy from him.
When Dan absorbed these details he recommended that Colin should contact a direct marketing agency and invite them to help him.
In a sense, Colin was reluctant to take his friend’s advice. He had spent a lot of time and effort setting up the existing business and had an emotional commitment to keeping the status quo. Also he did not feel any particular competitive pressure. ‘No one else is using he thought to himself.
He decided to give his direct marketing friend another call and discuss it one more time.

Question

Acting as Colin’s friend, explain what the benefits of direct marketing would be to his pizza operation. How would it work in practice? How would the website integrate into this operation?