1. First, give a brief of the case.
2. 
   
3. Then explain what are some of the marketing strategies that the company uses to differentiate itself from competitors?
4. 
   
5. What are some of the specific customer relationship practices that the company uses to create a marketing message? 
6. 
   
7. Review the 4 Ps, product, price, promotion, and package concepts within the case that the company applies to sell its products and services.
8. 
   
9. What is the key target market for the restaurant?
10. 
    
11. How would you compete against this restaurant? What strategies could you use to differentiate yourself from Buffalo Wild Wings business model?

Your posts should be written with APA formatting and use several data points from the case to substantiate your answer. 

Buffalo Wild Wings: Fueling the Sports Fan Experience

Buffalo Wild Wings: Fueling the Sports Fan Experience
"Wings. Beer. Sports." That's the long-standing motto for the fast-growing Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant chain. "B-Dubs"—as it's known to avid regulars—focuses on food and sports and "everything in between."

There's no doubt about it. Buffalo Wild Wings more than lives up to the "wings" and "beer" parts of the equation. It serves up wings in an abundant variety: boned or boneless, with five dry seasonings and 17 signature sauces ranging on the heat scale from Sweet BBQ (traditional BBQ sauce: satisfyingly sweet with no heat) to Desert Heat (smoky, sweet, and chili pepper seasoning) to Reformulated Blazin' (so good it's scary—made with the unrelenting heat of the ghost pepper). To wash it all down, each B-Dubs restaurant pours as many as 30 different draft beers, with a full selection of domestic, import, and craft beer brands. You won't go hungry or thirsty at B-Dubs.

However, the Buffalo Wild Wings recipe for success goes much deeper than just selling wings and beer for profit. What really packs 'em in and keeps 'em coming back is the B-Dubs customer experience. Customers do gobble up the wings—more than 13.5 million wings chain-wide on last Super Bowl Sunday alone. But even more important, they come to B-Dubs to watch sports, trash talk, cheer on their sports teams, and meet old friends and make new ones—that is, a total eating and social experience. "We realize that we're not just in the business of selling wings," says the company. "We're something much bigger. We're in the business of fueling the sports fan experience. Our mission is to WOW people every day!"

Everything about B-Dubs is designed to deliver the ultimate sports experience, for any fan of any sport. The WOW begins the minute you step into any of Buffalo Wild Wings's 1,230 restaurants. This is not your average dark-and-dank sports bar. Instead, a B-Dubs is like a miniature stadium, with high ceilings, ample natural light, and brightly colored furnishings and wall coverings. The newest Buffalo Wild Wings "Stadia" restaurants are divided into barrier-free zones—including a bar area and a separate dining area. And every B-Dubs has 60 to 70 really big flat-screen TVs lining the walls, over the bar, and about everywhere else, ensuring that every table has the best seat in the house no matter what your team or sport, including live streaming of local college and even high school events. B-Dubs creates an exciting environment that makes it the next best thing to being at the game—or something even better.

There's an experience for everyone at Buffalo Wild Wings. The chain appeals to a wide range of customers, from pub-loving sports nuts to families looking for an affordable evening out. Singles and couples gravitate to the bar area; families stick to the carpeted areas with booths. In addition to streaming sports events of all kinds on the big screens, B-Dubs supplies tableside tablets upon which customers can play poker or trivia games. A social jukebox feature lets guests control the music that plays on the restaurant's sound system.

It seems like there's always something happening in a B-Dubs to engage customers and enhance the experience. Take the chain's infamous Blazin' Wing Challenge—which promises a trophy-style T-shirt and a place on the Wall of Fame to any customer who can down a dozen wings with the chain's hottest signature sauce in no more than six minutes. That's no easy feat considering that the Blazin' sauce is 60 times hotter than typical jalapeño sauce. During the six-minute binge, challengers are not allowed to use napkins or utensils, touch their faces, or eat or drink anything other than the wings (no dipping sauces, please). The menu boasts plenty of warnings, and servers advise most people not to even attempt the challenge. And before taking the plunge, each challenger signs a waiver agreeing that he or she "voluntarily assumes all risk of loss, damage, injury, illness, or death that may be sustained by him or her as a result." As you can imagine, when a challenge is announced over the PA, it usually draws a crowd.

Buffalo Wild Wings never rushes its guests. Whereas many other casual-dining restaurants have a "turn-and-burn" philosophy—cycling as many paying guests as possible through each table—at B-Dubs it's just the opposite. Buffalo Wild Wings encourages people to linger longer, enjoy the food, and soak up the ambiance.

Customer-focused mission: The Buffalo Wild Wings mission is to provide a total eating and social environment that "fuels the sports fan experience" through in-store and online engagement.

To help make that happen, the chain has created a special staff position at each restaurant. In addition to the usual waitstaff, each table has a "Guest Experience Captain." The captain is like a host at any party, moving from table to table, chatting with guests, personalizing their experiences, and making sure their needs are met. Want a special game on one screen with another game on the screen next to it? Your Guest Experience Captain sees to it. Need help with a tablet? Your captain lends a hand. Want to try some new sauces? Your captain will make suggestions and even bring out samples of different sauces with complimentary fries for dipping.

Adding Guest Experience Captains is a major expense, especially when multiplied across shifts in all 1,230 stores. But Buffalo Wild Wings reasons that the captains will more than pay for themselves by enhancing the all-important guest experience, keeping customers around longer, and bringing them back more often. Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants with captains are achieving record levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty compared with those that have not yet brought captains on board.

True to its "ultimate sports experience" mission, Buffalo Wild Wings actively engages its customers digitally and socially outside its restaurants as well as inside. In fact, the company brags that it's the number-one brand in its industry for digital fan engagement. B-Dubs's very active website draws 3 million visitors per month. The brand has more than 12 million Facebook fans, 699,000 Twitter followers, and very active YouTube and Instagram pages. It recently launched GameBreak, an app for fantasy football and other games that can be played inside or outside its restaurants. GameBreak players visit more often, stay longer, and tend to buy maybe one more basket of wings or that second or third beer. In all, Buffalo Wild Wings creates a host of both in-store and online promotions that inspire camaraderie. "It's about giving [customers] tools to not just be spectators but advocates of the brand," says the chain.

Catering to the customer experience has paid big dividends for Buffalo Wild Wings. B-Dubs is now the nation's number-one seller of chicken wings and largest pourer of draft beer. Over the past five years, as other casual-dining restaurants have struggled with fierce competition and slow growth, B-Dubs's sales have jumped 250 percent and profits have tripled. The chain's "hottest wing coating available comes with a warning to B-Dubs' customers: 'keep away from eyes, pets, and children.' The sauce is called 'Blazin'," says one analyst. "That term also happens to be a good description of the [brand's] performance lately."