Marketing plan for Happy Seasons restaurant

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

Acting in the capacity of a marketing expert in your organization, prepare an integrated Marketing Plan for your company. Situation audit (including macro-environmental analysis), competitive analysis, analysis on customers, distribution of SWOT analysis on company and brand) should be conducted before the development of marketing objectives. Focus should be given to the development of marketing objectives and marketing strategies. Plan should also include the tactical plans as well as the proposed sales forecast and budget for effective execution and implementation. You are encouraged to select a brand, product or service that you are familiar with.

1.0 Introduction

4 Happy Seasons Restaurant is opened on 18th January 2009 at Wangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur. The concept of the restaurant is aroused from the amazing nature of four seasons, which are spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each season represents different moods and serves foods that associate with the theme of seasons. Various types of foods are served at the restaurant, including Malaysian, Western, Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine. The word "Happy" in the restaurant's name stands for the meaning of customers are able to experience happiness and joyful while dining variety of cuisine in the restaurant's comfortable environment.

The main target customers of 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant are customers who look for place to dine tasty foods in relaxing ambience. Foods provided by the restaurant ranging from main course, desserts, snacks, to drinks; the price is affordable, in which the food's price range from RM 5.80 to RM 35. The menu will change every week to ensure variety of foods that will never bored the customers. Promotions are also held by the restaurant, where the member card holder is entitled for discounts, Set Lunches everyday with 14 varieties as low as RM 7.90, Set Dinners, birthday promotions etc.

1.1 Executive Summary

4 Happy Seasons Restaurant is the new player in the food industry.

It has its own strengths such as the first and only restaurant in Malaysia with the concept of four seasons. Employee issues, lack of choices for food and location are the weakness of the restaurant.

Space Analysis shows that 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant is in competitive posture. It also positions itself as a sophisticated, high quality of service and an exciting restaurant.

There are mainly two main competitors such as Feeling Café and Fun OK café which also located at the nearby area and having competitive advantage as a themed restaurant. Both of these restaurants also have their own strengths and weakness.

In terms of Gap Analysis, 4 Happy Seasons restaurant scores average on all the 4 gaps including market intelligence gap, design gap, production gap, and perceptual gap.

Overall, there is still a room for improvement in order to increase its market share and the company must always maintain its competitive advantage to ensure the survival.

2.0 SWOT Analysis

2.1 Strengths

Unique four season experience is the first strength of 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant. 4 Happy Seasons is the first and currently only restaurant in Malaysia with the concept of four seasons. It is a two storey building where the spring and summer section is at the ground floor while autumn and winter section at the first floor. Each section of season is decorated attractively to let the customers feel the atmosphere during the particular season because Malaysia is a country that does not has seasonal changes. To enhance the overall experience of four seasons, the restaurant has imported the furniture from oversea to create more decent and relaxing ambience.

In the restaurant, there are varieties of foods are designed according to the theme, which means that each season has its own menu; this includes 75 main courses, 14 desserts, 8 snacks, and 30 varieties of drinks. They are constantly changing the menu to provide more options to customers and surprised them with more new delicious foods. Customers can also enjoy some foods and snacks specially designed by the restaurant's own chef which available only in 4 Happy Seasons. The chef is employed from five star hotels to ensure the tastiness and quality of cuisine.

Customer service is another strength of 4 Happy Seasons. The employees have gone through trainings and capable of knowledge and skills to provide quality service to customers. They are required to wear tidy uniform to give good impressions to the customers and greet customers with cheerful smiles once they entered into the restaurant. Besides, the employees of 4 Happy Seasons are also always showing good manner and positive attitude while serving customers that will leave good memory in their minds of the favorable dining experience in the restaurant.

Halal certification is also added value to the restaurant. 4 Happy Seasons has passed the tight examination and certified as halal by JAKIM. This will consequently attract more Muslim customers to visit the restaurant instead of just target to non-Muslim customers, because Muslim stands for the largest population and potential market in Malaysia. It will also give confidence to the Muslim customers to enjoy foods at the restaurant and obey to their religion at the same time. Many restaurants have ignored this because they feel that the procedure of halal application is complicated and time consuming.

2.2 Weaknesses

Employee issues are one of the restaurant's weaknesses. 4 Happy Seasons is currently lack of permanent workers which force the restaurant to employ more part time workers. Most of the pr-timers are foreigners that are not fluent in our languages, for example, English and Bahasa Melayu. Although they are providing good services to customers, but there will be communication barriers between customers and the employees. This will affect the overall customer experience because the restaurant might serve wrong orders to customers due to misunderstanding and create more unsatisfied customers.

Other than that, some customers feel that the choices of main course on the restaurant's menu are too limited. They often found that it is hard when they are trying to decide which main course to choose and the snacks available seems to have more varieties than the main course. After they ordered the foods, customers sometimes need to wait for a long time until the foods get ready and serve on their table. This long waiting will annoy the starving customers and leave bad impressions because people nowadays expect everything to be fast.

Location of 4 Happy Seasons is another disadvantage that affects the business of the restaurant. Although the building of the restaurant is visible from the roadside, but it is hard for people to recognize the restaurant, especially those first-time visitors, because the restaurant is situated at the corner of the building. The signboard of the restaurant's logo is also cannot be seen easily due to the odd placement of signboard. Signage is also not provided around the area to give clear direction of the restaurant's exact location.

2.3 Opportunities

Development of surrounding area has become an opportunities for the business of 4 Happy Seasons. Shopping centre with high traffic flow, such as Carrefour is nearby the restaurant and the residential area around will increase the probability of customers to dine in the restaurant. The restaurant is also situated at the new business centre where many shop lots that are to be opened. Customers have easy access to the restaurant because it is located beside the road and parking lots available around the restaurant. They also can reach there conveniently by public transport such as taxi, bus, and LRT.

Besides, college nearby is also provided opportunities to 4 Happy Seasons. Tunku Abdul Rahman College which consists of huge number of students is situated around the area. Thus, it will increase the chances to attract more students to visit the restaurant. 4 Happy Seasons should not neglect the market of students, because they are usually the group of people who like to hang out with friends and dining in comfortable environment. They tend to spread word-of-mouth after experienced something and share it with other people via internet. It is a form of free advertising of the restaurant to inform more people the existence of 4 Happy Seasons.

Growth in number of women in employment rate opens chances for development of the restaurant's business. Nowadays, more women are engaging in working, it has overturned the traditional roles of women cooking in the house for their family. Not to mention women only, everyone is spending lots of time on working for more money; they are unlikely to waste their time on cooking, thus, they choose to dine at restaurant due to the fast and convenience. By recognizing this opportunity, 4 Happy Seasons is also catered for orders through phone.

2.4 Threats

4 Happy Season might face great competition due to the huge number of competitors. Many café and restaurant with different concept is established at Wangsa Maju. All these competitors offered various foods and beverages in different prices; customers have more options to choose if they refuse to visit 4 Happy Seasons if they look for delicious foods in lower prices. On the other hand, the location of the restaurant in new business centre poses it to bigger threat because development will increase more competitions in future. The concept of four seasons also might be copied other players in the market after knowing the success of 4 Happy Seasons.

Another threat of 4 Happy Seasons is the global economic slowdown. It has caused reduction in consumer's consumption and customers tend to spend carefully. Furthermore, the increment of petrol price to RM 2.00 per liter that will effective from 1 September 2009 and 30% increase in all public transportation, including bus, taxi, and LRT, will burden large group of citizens. They will try to drive lesser on road to save more money spending on petrol, thus, more people will consider cooking at house with the materials purchase at supermarkets in lower prices.

People nowadays are more health-conscious, thus, they are more concerned with the nutrition of the foods consumed. This can be proved from the rapid growth of natural and organic foods market. Health-conscious people tend to control and watch carefully whatever that will be consumed to ensure the foods will not endanger their bodies. They demand the foods in less sugar, low calories, free from coloring, flavoring and preservatives. For the reason mentioned above, they try to avoid consume outside foods because they feel unsafe with the ingredients used to cook the foods.

3.0 Objective

3.0 SPACE Analysis

FS

ES

IS

CA

2

-4

6

2

4

6

-2

-4

-6

-2

-6

4

Aggressive

Conservative

COMPANY DIMENSIONS

Strategic postures

INDUSTRY DIMENSIONS

Competitive

Defensive

Figure 1.0 Space Analysis Map

3.1 Industry Assessment

In the following section, the number in parentheses is the value assigned to a factor. The factors and their assigned values are stated in Table 1 to Table 4 as attachment in appendix.

3.1.1 Factors Determining Environmental Stability (ES)

Although the impact of technological changes on food industry is not visible to people but there are still minor impacts, including the development of food quality control system (2). The rate of inflation in Malaysia is high and it is growing in this few years (4). With many companies in the food industry, strong market growth, and no established standards, demand variability is fairly large (4). Furthermore, the price ranges of competing products are wide with some foods sell in very cheap prices while some are selling at high prices (4). A combination of lack of standards, low capital requirements and plenty of interested venture capitalists, thus, barriers to entry are low (2). Competitive pressure is very high (5), because the competition in food industry is fierce due to intensive promotion methods used by the large number of competitors. Price elasticity of demand is fairly elastic because customers can easily switch to competitors foods (3).

3.1.2 Factors Determining Industry Strength (IS)

With the increasing number of people eating outside due to changing role of married women into labor force and people like to try new taste of food, there is high opportunities to growth (5). Profit potential is still considered moderate due to the demand of people for high quality of food in cheaper price (3). Financial stability is moderately high since most of the restaurants or cafés want to get instant cash rather than market share (4). The risk of company being leapfrogged by new technology from competitor is low since foods are controlled by manpower such as the skill of the chiefs (2). Resource utilization is quite efficient because most of the ingredients are ordered via supplier just in time in order to maintain the freshness. (4) Moreover, capital intensity is currently in the moderate level but is expected to increase due to the continuous innovate of new foods. (4) It is easy to enter into the food industry since there is no clear market leader and the market is still very attractive. (2) Finally, the productivity level is relatively high in the food industry so that customers do not need to wait long time for the foods. (4)

3.2 Company Dimensions

3.2.1 Factors Determining Competitive Advantage (CA)

4 Happy Seasons is considered as new player in the industry and hold little market share (2). The food ingredients are ordered at the right time to keep the freshness and nutrient; it is only made once the customers order. (5). The product life cycle of the restaurant is in the early stage. Product replacement occurs often as the menu of the food will change every week in order to remain competitive (4). The company is building customer loyalty by launching loyalty card programme which enable the company to capture customer's data of those frequent visitor of restaurant and tailor their needs and wants by sending them newsletter or short messages (SMS) (4). On the other hand, the capacity utilization of 4 Happy Seasons's competitors is average but it still able to pose threat to the restaurant since it has capacity available for expansion (3). Besides that, the technological know-how is in moderate level (4) since the company has its own website where customers can get information such as latest promotions, menu and locations. Finally the vertical integration are considered low (2) as the company do not own any franchise or achieve some degree of vertical integration in terms of international distribution.

3.2.2 Factors Determining Financial Strengths (FS)

The company does not publish its financial report like other well establish company, so we make assumption based on the opinion of the manager of 4 Happy Seasons restaurant.

3.3 Implication of SPACE analysis

The relative size of the opposing dimension gives a guide to the appropriate strategic posture of a firm. From Figure 1.0, it shows the overall weight of the SPACE analysis towards the bottom right hand quadrant. This shows that 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant is in competitive posture, which is a company with competitive advantage in an attractive industry. However, the company's financial strength is deficient to balance the environment stability. Therefore, the firm needs more financial resources to keep up competitive. Greater efficiency and productivity can help the company achieve such position. Finally, we recommend 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant to raise its capital or merge with a cash rich company in order to strengthen its financial resources.

4.0 Multidimensional Positioning Analysis

Sincerity of service

4 Happy Seasons

Nando's

Sophistication

High efficiency of food preparation

McDonald

Feeling Cafe

Fun Ok Cafe

Excitement

Figure 2.0 Perceptual Map of Restaurant and Café in Kuala Lumpur

The score of each of the restaurant of café (stimuli) on the dimension (vector) is measured by their relative position as the vector is traced back through the centre. McDonald has represented the highest efficiency of food preparation (on the east-west dimension), followed by Nando's, Fun Ok Café, Feeling Café and 4 Happy Seasons; customers have to wait longer time for the foods in 4 Happy Seasons compared to others. While the opposition vector indicates sophistication, in which 4 Happy Seasons scores the highest. It clearly shows that the restaurant is positioned itself as romantic, glamorous and charming restaurant with well presentation of food. This could be the ideal restaurant for those young and mature couples to celebrate their big occasions such as Valentine's Day and Anniversary's Day. Besides, the North dimension demonstrates the superior service which shows the highest scoring to be 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant, followed by Nando's, McDonald, Feeling Café and Fun Ok Café. Although the speed of preparing foods is slower than other restaurants, but 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant's employees treat the customer with honesty, cheerfully and friendly. Customer will also get the warmest service with each of the employees greet them once they enter into the restaurant. Finally, Fun Ok are illustrate as the most exciting restaurant, this restaurant are providing a lot of games, which is the extra activities for customer to play with their friends while dining in the restaurant.

5.0 Competitor Analysis

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Good taste Bad taste

High prices Low prices

Easy parking Limited Parking

Wide range Narrow range

High visibility Low Visibility

4 Happy Seasons Restaurant

Fun OK Café

Feeling Café

Figure 3.0 Store Image Comparison between Three Competing Restaurants on Five Attributes

5.1 Feeling Café

This café is co-owned by local celebrities, Chan Fong and Michael Wong. The live band performance has become its strength where it is the reason for customer's visit. Songs dedication is allowed whereby the customers can listen to their favorite songs while dining. It has been developed as a competitive advantage for Feeling Café that will differentiate itself with other competitors. The café is one of the few cafés that combines dining with live band performance, so Feeling Cafés will come into customer's mind easily when talking about place that provide music experience and platform for people to interact with each other to discuss the latest music.

5.1.1 Accessing current strategy and activities

Target Market

Feeling café is aimed to provide up-to-trend music to customers when they are enjoying foods in the café. It is targeting to those music lovers who age range from 16 to 40 years old. This group of people likes to talk about the music and try to catch up the latest trend. They are less price sensitive and love to hang out with friends especially during night. Therefore, Feeling café is a perfect place for them because of its operation hours from 6pm to 1am everyday. Feeling café has become the common place for them to gather and spend great time with friends.

Place

The new premise of Feeling Café is relocated at Wangsa Maju, section 2. The new location is more convenience where it just situated nearby Wangsa Maju LRT Station. Customers only need to take 5 minutes by car to reach to the café. The café is easily accessible since it is highly visible and located nearby the roadside. Besides that, there is lots of parking available so that customers do not have to walk far from where they park their cars. The area is safety enough because it is surrounded by shop lots, even midnight the place is still crowded with people.

Product

Menu of Feeling Café is divided into 4 sections, which is set lunch, snacks, main course and drinks. It only provides 6 choices under its set lunch. Besides that, the snacks only have 7 selections and the main course was divided into 3 parts which is western foods, rice and noodles. There are only 3 hot drinks, 6 cold drinks, and 6 flowers and herbals tea available. However, it is great for the horoscope lovers to visit Feeling Café because it offers the special horoscope drinks. Therefore, they can choose their preferable drinks according to their horoscope.

Price

Main course offered by Feeling Café are ranged from the price of RM 7.90 to RM 19.90. Other than that, customers can enjoy set lunch with a free drink by only paying RM 8.90. For the drinks provided, it has hot drinks specialties that range from RM 3.90 to RM 4.90, flower and herbal teas which serve for 2 people per pot is just costs RM8.90. Then, there are also cold drinks specialties which range from the price of RM 6.90 to RM 7.90. Furthermore, the horoscope drinks is another attraction of the café because customers can try new drinks that have different taste and experience. The café is charging 5% for tax and service charge.

Promotions

Feeling café has its own website (www.feelingcafe.com.my). Other than information about the foods and beverages offered by the café, through the website, customers can communicate with each other on the forum provided. They can also interact with different people and build community to share information about their favorite singers. Most of the celebrities are local singers. Thus, consumers can interact with the singers in close quarters and share their music experiences. Time schedule of the live performance and the name of singers of the day can also be found from the website.

5.1.2 Predicting future strategies

Feeling café is always motivated to provide more superior services and foods to customers. It is not satisfied with the current position and understands that competitors may easily exploit the market without perturbed if they just stay with current position. Therefore, it always adapts itself into the changes in market and consumer behaviors. They provide survey form to customers to track their comments for further improvement. In addition, it also keeps on innovate the menu to offer more creative foods and beverages to the customers and seek for their opinions to monitor the quality of foods from the survey's results. The café will strengthen its position in the market by constantly improving and observing customer's satisfaction.

Other than that, Feeling Café ensures that the standard of live band performance is maintained high because it is the main attraction of the café. So, Feeling Café is always looking for good singers and performers that capable to present different types of music to customers. The forum on the website can show that the café is paying attention on customer's comments on the singers. It also plans to invite more local singers in the future to promote their new album in the café. This shows that the café is using celebrities as an attraction to encourage more visitors; at the same time, it is also able to create favorable image and show their contribution in supporting the development of local music industry.

Besides that, Feeling Café is also relocated itself to a bigger space due to the customers' complaint. The original café is quite small and only could accommodate maximum of 50 persons, including indoor and outdoor of the café. Thus, a bigger space is necessary in order to serve more customers. It is because they noticed that customers feel difficult to get their seats during peak hours and it might create unsatisfied customers with the situation faced. On the other hand, it also shows that Feeling Café is making profit and has sufficient financial resources to establish new store and the chances of the café to expand into more places is high from the action of the new premise's set up.

5.2 Fun OK

Design of the café is using the home concept where it intended to present a feeling of home when the customers visit it. It is divided into few sections such as living room, garden, toilet and others. Most of the furniture is specially designed by the owner. For example, they may use the refrigerator and toilet bowl as the seats for customers. Fun OK is also provided games such as poker card and Uno for customers, where the cards are kept inside the penguin refrigerator, which is the seat. The fun concept of the café is matched with customer's taste and the home feeling customers feel when dining in the café makes them feel comfortable just like spending their time in their own house.

5.2.1 Accessing current strategies and activities

Target Market

The objective of Fun OK Café is to create a home feeling to its customers. It is because most of the customers are not local dwellers where they come from other states. Most of its target market is people whose age ranged from 18 to 30 years old. Therefore, a home concept café can successfully capture their attention. This will subsequently create a competitive advantage over other competitors due to Fun OK's position as the first and only one café in the area with the unique home concept. Customers are strongly impressed by the design and decoration where it feels exactly like home. It is aimed to make the customers feel that the café is the right place for them to stay and spend longer time with.

Place

Fun OK café is located at section 2, Wangsa Maju where it is nearby the LRT station. There are many shop lots and household areas surrounding in which Fun OK café is just situated in the middle of the shop lots. Like Feeling Café, 5 minutes are required if customers travel by car, on the other hand, it only consumes 10 to 15 minutes to reach there by walking. The location is convenient because many parking lots are provided. The signage is large enough to guide customers where it is located. Therefore, customers do not need to search the café for a long time and they can get there easily.

Product

Foods menu of the café is specially designed like a photo album. Once customers take their seat, they will receive an album where inside is listed with the foods and beverages selections. It has more than 30 choices for its beverages which include hot and cold drinks, milk shake, coffee and tea. This wide range of selection can satisfy more customers and prevent them from getting bored with the limited choices easily. Besides that, there is a mix and match selection under it foods section. It provides more than 20 main courses and 10 snacks such as western food, noodles, rice soup and sushi.

Price

The prices of the foods and beverages are priced on an average range that considered affordable for most customers. The main courses are charged from RM 8.90 onwards while the price of the snacks is ranging from RM 3.90 to RM 16.90. Other than that, the price range for beverages is from RM 4.50 to RM 7.90. Furthermore, customers can get a drink with just 99 cents by ordering a meal in the time range of 6pm to 9pm every Wednesday. Besides, customers can also take away the drinks by only paying RM 1.99.

Promotions

Customers can gain detailed information about the café's offerings from its very own website. It also has a Friendster account in which it is used to promote its promotion and event. The photo sharing is allowed where customers can have a look on it and share the discussion with other people on Friendster. The most popular promotion of Fun OK café is "sneak king in the house", where it just costs RM 4.99 for every snacks with a free drink. This promotion is available everyday from 3pm to 6pm. Besides, there is a theme for each 2 months. Customers can get 10% discount when they wear clothes with the theme's color. Furthermore, Fun OK also held events such as 328 earth hours, Halloween party, Christmas Eve party etc. in order to create chances for customers to interact with each other and make new friends. In addition, Fun OK makes the atmosphere of celebration in the café just like having party with friends and families at home.

5.2.2 Predicting future strategies

The current position of Fun OK café is not stable enough because they are just a new player in the market. Thus, they have low brand awareness among customers. Most of the people still do not know the existence of the café. So, Fun OK café might do lots of promotion in the future just to gain higher awareness among customers. They also tend to create more funny and memorable name for its drinks and foods so that can capture consumers' attention and leave stronger image in customer's minds. Besides that, they will also need to renovate the café with more creative furniture so that the home feeling concept can strongly present to customers. Improvements are necessary in order to match customers' expectation and survive longer in the market.

6.0 Gap Analysis

6.1 Market Intelligence Gap

In 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant, the market intelligence gap is small because the difference between the restaurant's perceptions of customer expectation and customer expectation and needs are less. Nowadays, when customers choosing a restaurant, the taste and portion of the food are the most significant factor that customers put on top of their list; the environment and ambience of the restaurant comes second. For example, the interior design in 4 Happy Seasons Restaurant is emphasized on the design to bring out the four different season settings, but it may fail to realize that customers are more concerned about the portion and tastiness of the foods. From customer's perceptive, the restaurant should provide the foods in large portion that are enough for a boy. Even they hire the chef from 5 star hotels in order to produce the delicious food and the innovative design of the food, customer still feel hungry after they finishing the main course such as rice or mi. As consequences, customer may feel disappointed due to the perception of the foods are not worth for the price and never return to the restaurant.

Other than that, another reason for small in market intelligence gap is where the restaurant does not interact with the customers and acquire detailed information about their services and foods. For example, customers who return their sweater in the winter seasons might indicate that the sweater was too small for them or the sweater is smelly due to many people wearing it before. Besides that, sometimes customers do not finish the food because they feel the food is lack of taste or too salty. From the analysis, we find out that most of the employees irregularly contact with these customers.

6.1.2 Design gap

Design gap of the restaurant is small because there are differences between the restaurant's perception of customer expectations and the restaurant's offer specification. For example, 4 Happy Seasons restaurant set a standard that the winter section must always keep in 15 Celsius and below in order to provide winter experience to customers. This standard offer no benefits to customers because they feel too cold, especially most of them like to socialize with their friends for few hours, but the restaurant refuse to put up the Celsius. From the analysis, customer will less likely to return the restaurant after first time visit because they feel that the restaurant develops its service goals based on their beliefs about proper operations of the business rather than on the customer's needs.

Moreover, employees in 4 Happy Seasons restaurant are less motivated to achieve the service goals because the goals are not specific, measurable and participatory. For example vague goals such as "Approach customers when they enter the restaurant" or "Respond the emails as soon as possible" do not fully specific what employees should not do nor do they offer an opportunity to assess employee performance. Not only that, from the analysis, the restaurant does not set a standard that within how long they should respond to customer's call and time in waiting for bill.

6.1.3 Production gap

The production gap of the restaurant is wide because the differences between the offer specification and delivered offered is high. 4 Happy Seasons restaurant stresses on the service quality provided, the restaurant wants its employees to serve the customers friendly and put the customers' needs and wants at the first priority. But most of the employees are originated from other countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia; most of them cannot speak fluently in English and Bahasa Malaysia. As the employees cannot speak and understand the language, it becomes a constraint to communicate to the customers. If the employee failed to communicate with customers, it will be difficult for them to understand the customers' needs and wants and unable to serve their customers well. Besides that, the food quality is not consistent and this will increase the production gap because the promised consistent food quality and the delivered quality are different, thus, customers will refuse to visit the restaurant again.

6.1.4 Perceptual Gap

Although there are many types of food provided in the restaurant, and some of the foods are categorized into 4 seasons in their menu, but some of the customers feel that 4 Happy Seasons restaurant does not provide foods that emphasize on the theme of 4 seasons in which the customers are not satisfied with. Some customers not agree that Vietnamese, Indonesian foods in the menu are not considered as food from 4 season's countries. These types of foods cannot link the customers with the image of foods consume during four seasonal changes.

Besides that, 4 Happy Seasons restaurant emphasize itself to provide 4 seasons experience to the customer, but some customers think that those ambience and scenery are not convince enough for them to believe that the restaurant is providing a 4 season experience. For example, some customers will think that a winter experience is having snow around them, customers will surround by flowers in spring, but in 4 Happy Seasons restaurant, there are only the colors, furniture, paintings and the scenery around the restaurant will give experience of 4 seasons. From the analysis, the company raised customer expectations to an unrealistic level and gave customers who did confront an unpleasant surprise an additional reason to be angry.

Other than that, some customers are not agreeing with the 5 star environments in 3 star prices declared by the restaurant, even though all the furniture and fixtures in the restaurant are imported from Europe and the design are learned from other western countries. In some of the customer's perception, the interior design of the restaurant is very luxury, but it is still cannot be considered as the 5 star environment. Price setting that emphasize on 3 star prices is also confusing customer because customers cannot interpret what is the measurement and how much of the price is considered as 3 stars. As the restaurant unable to convince customer to believe that the restaurant is a 5 star environments with a 3 star prices, it is hard for the restaurant to retain loyalty customers as the actual state experienced in the restaurant is not as what customers perceived in the mind.

7.0 Recommendations

4 Happy Seasons can reduce the market intelligence gap and develop a better understanding of customer by undertaking customer research such as questionnaire about the food's taste and services, surveying individual customer who does not finish the food and tracking customer's complaints. Then, the manager should review the suggestions and comments made by customers, summarize the information and distribute it to all employees. On the other hand, in order to close the standard gaps, the company needs to provide high quality service such as giving them a free cup of hot waters when they complaining cold or suggest them to change to other sections of the restaurant instead of ignoring their complaints.

Moreover, the company should establish specific and measurable goals in order to motivate the employees to achieve the goals. For example, "All customers should be served by the employee within 30 seconds after entering the restaurant and "All e-mails should be respond to within 1 day. In order to reduce the production gap, the restaurant must provide necessary knowledge and skills for serving customers to employees such as giving training about the service standards and provide them language class. With this, employees can enhance the communication process with customers by answering customer's questions and suggesting them foods if customers cannot decide what to eat.

Other than that, the restaurant can deliver better service to customers by giving the employees incentives when they are selected as best employee of the month. As a result, employees are more motivating to work harder and having good competition with each other for the incentives. The incentives will also increase the overall job satisfaction other than stimulated by the good working environment provided. All these will create more loyalty employees that will stay with the restaurant and they will in turn serve the customers even better; at the same time, the issue of job turnover can be reduced.

Furthermore, the restaurant should reduce customer's time in waiting for food. They should enhance efficiency of preparing food by encouraging job specialization and teamwork in the kitchen. They should select right person for the right job and always make sure the ingredients of the food in preparing earlier before the restaurant is open. The process of customer's dining in the restaurant can be improved by implementing new ordering system, in which customers can press the button to call the employees for orders and bills that the employees can respond to it immediately, customers do not have to look around to search for the employees and wave hands to grab their attention.

Not only that, the restaurant should play more slow music in order to influence customer's moods which influence a variety of consumption behavior. Slow music appears to have relaxed and slowed down the customers, resulting in more time spend in the restaurant and substantially more purchases from the restaurant. In other words, customer will be more willing to wait longer for the food to be served. Research also indicates that slow music increased gross margin for one restaurant by almost 15 percent per customer group compared with fast music (Miliman. R.E)

Maintain of continuous creation of new foods is important to remain the competitive advantage of 4 Happy Seasons as innovator in designing foods. The restaurant should come out with more new delicious main course to provide more selections to customers. Besides constantly introducing foods and changing the menu frequently, the quality control of the taste of the cuisine is also crucial to the restaurant. Customers will be the first one who recognize that changes in taste of the foods, either it is bad or good, they will spread word-of-mouth to others that might impact the image of the restaurant.

Recognizing the importance of building relationship with customers, 4 Happy Seasons restaurant should provide more added values into the loyalty programme. Members of the restaurant not only can enjoy 10% discount of the overall bill, they also can get 20% discount during their birthday. In addition, they are entitled for free snack or drinks if continuously collect five chop on the loyalty card. The members also should receive frequent communication from the restaurant, including the newsletter about the latest promotion and also the food of the month. This can help to convert good customers into best customers and also increase share of wallet.

4 Happy Seasons is still a new player in the industry and lack of awareness, the company should build a community in order to increase awareness in the consumer's mind. The restaurant can open a fan's club in "Facebook" and publish latest promotion. With the fan's club, customers can also exchange opinion with the managers and get more customers' comments and suggestion for further improvement. The company can also practice social responsible in order to create a good publicity. For example, customers who spend for every RM 35 and above, each RM 1 will be donating to orphanage home. As result, this can help to spread positive word of mouth and build good image of the restaurant.

Most of the customers found that it is difficult for them to find the restaurant due to the poor signage placement; the company should increase the visibility of the restaurant. This can be done by providing clearer signage on the road side surrounding the area of Wangsa Maju. Not only that, the company should also provide a more detailed map for customers to guide them to the restaurant, although there is currently an existing map published on the website, but customers still find it to be confusing and lack of point of search.

Lastly, in order to become responsible social citizen that concerns about the customer's health, 4 Happy Seasons can introduce a more healthy food concept. By doing so, the restaurant is able to catch up the latest trend of emphasizing on healthy lifestyle. It can choose to use healthier ingredients to prepare and cook the foods, for instance, using whole meal bread to make sandwiches and make cakes with less sugar and calories. Thus, more favorable image of the restaurant will build in customer's mind, since they link the foods offered by the restaurant as healthy and safe to consume.

8.0 Conclusion

From the report, 4 Happy Season has several advantages over its competitors, including the unique 4 season's experience, customer service and innovative in foods. However, the restaurant is also facing few problems such as employee issues and the poor signage. The restaurant is still considered as new player in the market and lack of awareness among public because still lots of people never heard the restaurant's name before and do not know the its existence.

Based on the analysis, the restaurant is on the competitive postures, which means it is a company that able to sustain the competitive advantage in the attractive industry. Other than that, the multidimensional positioning analysis also indicated that 4 Happy Seasons is tend to position in customer's mind as restaurant that provide high quality services, foods, and sophisticated ambience. Two main competitors of 4 Happy Seasons are Feeling Café and Fun OK Café. Each café is aimed at different group of customers, in which Feeling café is place for people who like to enjoy music to hang out; while Fun OK attracts people to look for home-like feel place to gather with their friends and family.

The weaknesses mentioned in the analysis should be solved to improve and increase the overall value to be delivered to customers. 4 Happy Seasons especially need to narrow the gap of the actual services delivered and the restaurant's perceived state in order to create more delighted customers when they dine in the restaurant. Only by overcoming the issues arise from the analysis, 4 Happy Seasons is able to retain satisfied customers as loyalty customers that are likely to spread good word-of-mouth and recommend to others about the good experience with the restaurant. Word-of-mouth is vital in food industry as it able to help to build good image of the restaurant as serving tasty foods, providing quality services and good environment.