Dominos Pizza, with approximately 15,900 stores and over 260,000 employees in 85 countries, is the largest pizza chain in the world, measured by global retail sales. In Canada, Dominos Pizza (www.dominos.ca) operates 500 stores, making it the third-largest pizza restaurant chain in Canada by sales revenue. Dominos 30-minutes-or-free guarantee set the fast-food industrys customer expectations for convenience, speed, and efficiency. Dominos business model consists of three segments: ordering, producing, and delivering. At the end of 2008, Dominos was experiencing decreasing sales and troubled franchises. The company recognized it had a serious problem. In short, its pizza was not very good. It was still cheap, but the recipes and ingredients had not kept up with the foodie movement. (Customers are foodies when they have great interest in their food, where it came from, and how it was raised, processed, and transported.) In addition, Dominos had abandoned its key marketing sloganits 30-minute guaranteeafter several accidents involving its drivers, one of them fatal, which generated two lawsuits that cost the company millions of dollars. Making matters worse, in the spring of 2009, a video appeared online of two Dominos employees. One filmed the other putting cheese up his nose and then adding that cheese to a sandwich. The video went viral, and the local health department temporarily shut down the restaurant. Dominos had the two employees arrested for tampering with food. (The orders never left the store, and both workers received probation.) The president of Dominos operations, J. Patrick Doyle, recorded a two-minute apology that, unfortunately, did not go viral.

A Variety of Solutions The Production Process Dominos instituted a variety of efforts to turn the company around. First, the chain overhauled its pizza recipe. Company chefs enhanced the quality of the mozzarella and the flour, added garlic butter to the crust, and added flavour and sweetness to the marinara sauce. After 18 months, Dominos had a new and improved (and expensive to make) pizza. In addition, Dominos revamped about 85 percent of its menu. Dominos then began a new marketing campaign, with Doyle again creating videos for television ads. The ads acknowledged the chains problems, were funny, and poked fun at the company as well. Morning talk show hosts began discussing the campaign, and local television anchors started to conduct taste tests.

As part of a new ad campaign, Dominos solicited photos from its customers and received almost 40,000 of them. One photo showed a badly mangled pizza delivered to a customer, which the ad agency featured in its next ad. The companys efforts were very successful. By February 2010, Dominos was selling so much pizza that it was three days away from running out of pepperoni. The companys successful initiatives did cause problems with the ordering process. Most orders still came in by phone, so when workers were overrun with orders, they could not answer the phone. Consequently, Dominos focused on improving its ordering process with digital technologies. The Order Process Dominos Pizza has been emphasizing all the way that its customers can digitally order food. The company began to introduce many new ordering methods: Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Twitter with emojis, Apple Watch, voice-activated, zero click, wedding registry. Customers can track their orders online, and they can also track their drivers. In Australia, Dominos can track customers on the way to the store so that their order will be ready just as they arrive to pick it up. Dominos wants customers to be able to place their order via any device as normally as they would to a person. For example, they can order pizza with Alexa (from Amazon) and Google Home, both of which are voice-controlled intelligent speakers. The Delivery Process The next segment of Dominos business model is delivery. More than half of Dominos employees are drivers. The chain is examining several initiatives to improve its delivery process. For example, a Dominos franchisee in Australia who owns 2,000 stores around the world is using drones to deliver pizza from a store in the New Zealand town of Whangaparaoa. The drones can travel about 2 kilometres from the store, and the customers must have a backyard so the drone can land safely. Dominos is also testing robots for delivery in New Zealand. Reports have noted that the robots have difficulties navigating uneven sidewalks and are not allowed on roads. As of mid-2019, Dominos had not yet offered robot pizza delivery in the United States. At that time, Virginia and Idaho allowed robotic delivery. Other U.S. states and federal regulations had not been determined. Despite Dominos digital efforts, many customers do not use technology (other than their phones) to order pizza, and most pizza is still delivered by humans. Dominos is also in the process of upgrading their stores because approximately 3540 percent of its sales come from customers visiting a store for takeout or to eat in the store. As a result, the chain is improving all its stores so that customers can see their pizzas being made and then eat in a clear, bright seating area if they choose to.

The Results Dominos does face competitive challenges. On-demand delivery services pose a threat to the chain. UberEATS and Grub Hub (www.grubhub.com) pose serious challenges. Delivery of a

variety of good, healthy foods straight from these companies will target lower- and middle- income customers, a key demographic for Dominos.

The chain is enjoying good news from all its efforts. Dominos has the highest loyalty among U.S. pizza chains and its finances have been improving for almost 10 years. Since the end of 2008, the companys share price has increased by 6,000 percent. The companys 2018 global retail sales totalled approximately US $15.8 billion. Furthermore, same-store sales grew almost 7 percent in the second quarter of 2018, compared to the second quarter of 2017.

Questions 1.Describe how information technology has impacted Dominos production process. 2.Describe how information technology has impacted Dominos order process. 3.Describe how information technology has impacted Dominos delivery process. 4.Which Dominos process has been impacted the most by information technology? 5.Which one of Porters strategies for competitive advantage is Dominos Pizza pursuing? Justify your answer. 6.Is Dominos pizza using technology to support such strategy? In other words, does Dominos Pizza display businessIT alignment? Justify your answer.