If I had moved to Salt Lake City and started to look for food, the first thing I would do is check reviews online, then I would check the pricing of the food as some food can be very expensive when it’s a fancy restaurant. I would probably look for something like pasta or a pizza, and depending on how far the restaurant is I will go pick it up. If it is further than a mile, I will then order the food as it would take a long time to walk back home to eat and the food would get cold. I personally look for the cheapest food, but the best value as well. I will spend lots of time browsing as sometimes delivery services offer coupons for ordering delivery which can make the food cheaper if you order instead of picking it up. There are also sometimes offers with new delivery services and can give up to a 50% off the first order which is really good. One thing I would also look out for is how the food is wrapped and packaged, I sometimes did delivery services and some places do not pack the food well and when driving it can shake a lot and sometimes open if food is not wrapped or sealed good enough which then leads to issues with the courier and the recipient. Looking into the ads of Salt Lake City, I noticed that a lot of the advertising involved mentioning delivery. Almost every ad I found showed in big letters “DELIVERY”.

For the shop I chose, I went with City Creek Pizza, I saw they had a website where you can order takeout, or order pick up ahead of time so that it was ready when you arrive. They had a lot of variety and if you did not like any of the options, you can customize a pizza to your liking which I liked. It also had some good prices, ranging from 9-22 dollars for a pie, the images on the website looked very appealing as well as on every page there were images of pizzas. I think that the ads were very centered towards making the pizza pop out more than others, as there were many pizza providers that would look similar, the review on City Creek Pizza was 4.5 stars on yelp and some people would talk about how it was homemade dough. I like to regularly order from the same spots, as I know that they are good so when I order something new I always check the reviews to make sure that the food is good.

I think I am very different from most customers, as when I did delivery myself I realized a lot of people would order up to 30-$40 of food most of the time and as well would tip me on top of that and for me, an average order is around 25-30 because I always like to go with cheaper food as a lot of new places like to say their pizza is high quality, but it is just overpriced and because of its popularity a lot of people like to pay the price and don’t complain about the quality. A lot of people also would order fast food or Italian foods, I don’t see the reason for ordering fast food on something like uber or doordash, because they charge more than what the restaurant does and on top of that they charge you delivery so it is seriously overpriced. One restaurant I know does this is Popeyes, sometimes they charge up to 3-4 more dollars on uber eats than ordering off the Popeyes website. I usually order from smaller local spots as they give higher quality food for about the same price.

Besnik Shakiri
MAR 100
Fall 2022
Week D

In the scenario that I have moved to Salt Lake city and am craving Italian takeout, I would first highly consider the decision making process in which I would find a satisfying option as a customer. As a customer firstly I would consider what is the atmosphere or aesthetic of the food I am looking for. For me personally, Since I am looking to order takeout, I would be more interested in doing my research of food quality and timely delivery to meet my satisfactions and possibly become a regular customer of the establishment. However, If I were looking to have a sit-down dining experience, I would be more interested in the restaurants services it has to offer as well as what king of seating they would have and if it would be a right fit for me. As I am new to the area, the first thing I would do is open google and look up Italian restaurants near me. This would be my most logical choice, as I have no prior knowledge as to what my options are. I would compile a list that seems most appealing to be and look at each restaurants price points that fit into my budget. If I were to use a food delivery app, I would take into consideration delivery fees and estimated time of arrival for deliveries. As someone who prefers to not do a pick-up order, I would keep in mind distance as I do not want to wait too long either. To further gain knowledge of what I would be interested in purchasing, I would look at customer reviews and see how satisfied other customers are with the establishments. I feel that shared reviews are an important part of making a decision as you can have an understanding of other viewpoints and agree or disagree as to what fits your needs. After doing a bit of research and coming upon a few options, the restaurant I’ve decided to place my order from would be Osteria Amor. I’ve chosen osteria Amore because they advertise themselves as a modern Italian eatery and their menu seems vast enough for me to be interested in ordering more than once in the future. Geographically, they are not too far from my home so I am confident that I will have my delivery done in a timely manner. I also enjoyed the aesthetic of the restaurant and based off of others reviews, I would be interested in visiting for a dine in experience in the near future. However if I am not satisfied with their services, I would be interested in other restaurants I have now kept tabs on as they have appealed to me as well. I ultimately am satisfied with my choice, but it’s always important to keep into consideration the process I had gone through to make s decision I would be happy with. It is also important to consider others taste may vary and that there are different needs to be met by different customers.

Exampling stage one of my buyer decision process, stage one is recognition of my needs. As I imagine, I’m a customer that moved to Salt lake city and wanting Italian takeout for dinner. Before looking for restaurants, I would ask myself what Italian dish I wanted. I decided I wanted Lasagna, and the place had to be casual, that Does pick up and serve delicious and genuine Italian food. Now, to find what I need, I would have to search on google or ask locals where to find the best Italian restaurant with good Lasagna. Since I’m new in town, Googling would be a better idea. While googling, I found this popular restaurant in the salt lake area named Caffé Molise that fulfilled all my needs. After finding the restaurant, I needed to know if it was a good restaurant, so I looked at the reviews on google, yelp, and Tik Tik to see what people were saying. And I saw that the restaurant had a lot of good reviews about the food and service, plus they take out orders. Showing stages two and three of the buyer’s decision process, searching for information about the product, and evaluating the available alternatives. After Fulffiliung all those stages, I hit stage four: Buying the product, which means going to the restaurant, buying the Lasagna, and taking it home. Now what usually comes after that would be my opinion of the service and food, exhibiting stage five of post-purchase evaluation, where I talk about the food, and I would discuss my issues or problems about the food with either peers or other people to give feedback about the restaurant/company.

After doing this marketing exercise, What I’d realize about the consumer decision-making process is that we, as customers do this on a regular; it’s part of our buyer behavior. We constantly do The Five Stages of the Buyer Decision Process when wanting a product. It’s so fascinating to see our human behavior being studied to sell products; what is even more interesting was finding out how buyers are also essential allies in the exchange process.

If I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and want to order Italian takeout, I would start to search on Google Maps. The search results will appear in order of rating starts from five to one. I will then take a closer look at what do top 5 ranked Italian restaurants offer. My favorite Italian food are some classic and authentic dish like lasagna, beef bourguignon with noodles egg, fettuccine noodles with mushroom and Tiramisu. Thus I will pay attention to which restaurant has the highest rated lasagna/beef bourguignon/fettuccine, or whether a restaurant has these food options at all. If there are multiple restaurants have those dishes with similar rating, I will then look for the pictures of interior environment of the restaurant on Google until I find the most clean one. Although I prefer delivery only, I still want my food being produced from a place with high hygiene standard.
Eventually I decided to choose Sicilia Mia, located at 4536 Highland Dr., Holladay, UT. This place seems to have the best Italian pasta with a variety of options. I don’t have price threshold. Local restaurants in Salt Lake City has reasonable prices.

I’ve just moved to Salt Lake City. Which is exciting but also nerve-racking because I, nor anyone I know, have ever lived here before. To me, one of the most challenging parts of being in a new location is figuring out which restaurants are actually good. Because being hungry, craving a specific type of food, and attempting to figure out which google suggestion to go with is always more stressful than it needs to be. It’s also worse when you have no personal contacts to reach out to for recommendations. Because while there are online reviews, trusting strangers online is always a gamble.

So after spending the day unpacking my things and arranging my apartment, I’m now absolutely famished and craving Italian. If I were back in NYC, I would know exactly where to go to get my fill of delicious carbs. But here in Salt Lake City, everything is still unknown. So finding the perfect Italian restaurant to satisfy my pasta craving will take some research. Here is how my consumer decision-making process went –

(Need Recognition) – I was hungry and craving Italian food. I specifically wanted pasta and lots of it. I also wanted a restaurant that offered take-out, as I still didn’t know anyone in Salt Lake City to invite out to dinner and didn’t want to dine out alone. I didn’t mind if the restaurant didn’t have a delivery option, as I have a car. And as a foodie, I’m always willing to spend extra money on potentially delicious food, so I was willing to spend up to 100 dollars on my dinner.

(Information Search) – After figuring out that I wanted Italian takeout for dinner, I turned to google. The first thing I googled was “best Italian restaurant in salt lake city”. Instantly google pulled up a list of suggestions, along with a google map so I could see where the restaurants were located, and different articles related to restaurant suggestions in Salt Lake City. I primarily scrolled through Google maps suggestions because I liked that it showed me where the restaurants were located + provided customer ratings and written reviews. As I searched google reviews, I only paid attention to restaurants that had 4.4+ ratings and over 500 reviews. While searching, I also realized I wanted a restaurant that offered online ordering, that way I didn’t have to go through the hassle of calling the restaurant to place my order. I then changed my google search to “best Italian restaurant in salt lake city order online” to make my search easier. I scrolled through the restaurants, checked out their online menus, and narrowed my search down to restaurants that fit all my wants.

(Evaluation of Alternatives) The first restaurant I found that fit all my needs was Per Noi Trattoria, which had a large and decently priced menu. But they only had a 4.4 rating with 742 reviews, so I decided to click on another restaurant, Tuccis Cucina Italiana, which had a 4.4 rating and 1.2k reviews. Tuccis Cucina Italiana also had a large menu selection with the
bonus of being more affordable than Per No Trattoria. The final restaurant that matched my criteria was Olive Garden Italian Restaurant. With a 4.4 star rating and 2.7k reviews on google, it was the best-rated restaurant that matched my criteria. With an extensive menu and reasonable prices, it was very tempting to order from them.

Ultimately I did not pick Olive Garden. As I realized I wanted a more “authentic” Italian meal. I chose Per Noi Trattoria, as I felt they were more authentic, had a great selection of items on their menu, and reasonable prices. The uploaded food pictures by customers also helped convince me to pick the restaurant, as all the food in the photos looked delicious.

What did you realize about the consumer decision-making process?
I realized how many things influenced my choices (from customer reviews to something as simple as the design of a website). I also realized how adding one additional variable can result in completely different suggestions. For example, the best Italian restaurant in SLC and the best Italian restaurant in SLC that offers takeout were not the same in my google search results.

How might your preferences compare to other consumers? Because the consumer decision-making process differs from person to person, my preferences can be completely different from others and result in dissimilar results. For example, another consumer might be content with having to call in to place their order. Or, someone might want a restaurant that offers delivery. Other consumers might want not care for takeout or delivery because they are planning to dine in. And another customer who wants to dine in might want a casual restaurant that doesn’t require reservations. Also preferences can differ by the price of the restaurants, whether it’s affordable, somewhere in the middle, or expensive.

Aumi Arias- Assignment C

Toys R Us used to be the most influential company of toys in America just a couple of decades ago. Since the moment it was founded in 1957, throughout the following years this brand showed a promising and stable future being the number one nightmare for its competitors. It seemed that there was no other path for their future than to expand and grow. Nevertheless, the company saw the end of its glory days because, among other factors, it failed to pursue new tactics to maintain its value in the outgrowing market of toys companies and ended up filing bankruptcy in 2017.

I’m going to be ranking some of the main marketing environment components that I consider were significant in the downfall of Toys R Us.

1)Demographic Factors: The company failed to execute the necessary changes to keep the brand as appealing for the new generation of kids who are more captivated by electronics, video games and social media. When a company fails to listen and provide their target population with the things that they’re interested in, the demand on the brand will naturally decay. For this reason, I believe that their main mistake was not listening to their customers’ needs.

2)Social Factors: As a toys’ brand the public that it used to target was kids. This company has existed since 1957, back then the interests of this group were totally different to the kids today, however this didn’t necessarily mean that it would be harder for them to reach their demographic. The way that companies influence the population has changed overall with the technology era. This brand lost the opportunity to evolve into creating a deeper and effective presence through technology as a means to promote themselves.

3)Political and Legal Factors: The company’s intentions to expand their horizons to the online market was a good strategy in theory. They stipulated a partnership with Amazon in which they would pay for exclusively. However, Amazon did not respect the deal and started selling toys from ToysRUs competitors. After terminating the deal and winning the lawsuit to Amazon, ToysRUs had to start their online presence from scratch, but by that moment it was too late to make any difference.

4)Competitive Factors: Despite the increasingly changing times, ToysRUs stated pretty much the same from its beginnings to the end. It was a very big company, for which huge changes and innovation were impossible to achieve at a fast pace. Unfortunately, the emerging competitors such as Walmart and Target were able to provide an experience that satisfied their consumers’ needs. There was nothing unique that would separate ToysRUs from many other innovative brands.

5)Economic Factors: After their past failures this company became an unsustainable business. They were in an urgent need of rebranding in order to keep up with their competitors. Unfortunately, by the time that they realized this, they couldn’t do anything as they were facing a huge debt.

Chelisa Ramsahai

Toys “R” Us was founded in 1948 by Charles Lazarus, the company made its name debut in 1957. They once Operated over 1,500 stores in 35 countries and jurisdictions around the world under the Toys “R” Us banners. The store was extremely popular for its wide variety of toys for children that was until it went bankrupt.
Competitive factors
In my opinion, the fact that Toys “R” Us was not legally the only store that was prohibited to sell toys but was the only one that was so invested in this area of goods they thought they were invincible. However, the competition with other stores led the company to bankruptcy. If the company had tried to get certain restrictions on other toy stores such as getting Toys “R: Us to be the only company that can sell certain toys or certain toys can only be found there maybe, they would still be in business. By doing that they would of knock out the competition.
Social factor
One of the biggest downfalls of Toys “R” Us was that they did not grow with technology enough. As time went by Toys “R” Us started to sell online yes, but they did not pay attention that their targeted market “children” were gradually not interested in physical toys, they were more interested in online games and videos. I believe if the company had invested in taking its product into the online world or even recognize that the market was dying and pulled the plug earlier it wouldn’t have been in bankruptcy.
Demographic factor
The biggest demographic factor for the Toys “R” Us company was kids. As children’s interest in physical toys decline the profits of the company did as well. The closing of the Toys “R” Us store wasn’t just the end of the company, I felt as if it was the end of an era as well. Since the business went out so did toys and outdoor activities, kids these days prefer to be cooped up in their room on any electronic device they can get their tiny hands on.
Economic factor
Even though the company tried to get back on its feet, it kept falling due to its competitors. The Toy “R” Us stores were beyond memorable and unique, but people forgot about that, as businesses went online, people stopped going into stores and started with online shopping. Some people even started importing their goods at cheaper costs. This caused the company’s income to reduce and hence contributed to leading them into bankruptcy.
Political and Legal factors
Toys “R” Us tried to expand and joined with Amazon to sell its toys online hoping to make more profits and widen its customers. But this attempt backfired, it ended up not being financially worth it in the end. Toys “R” Us paid Amazon and expected exclusivity, but Amazon started selling third-party items at probably lower prices. Toys “R” Us was already financially strained and could not afford Amazon but amazon didn’t want to let them out, so they took Amazon to court for failure to keep up their end of the deal. While they did win the lawsuit, the time lost battling in court could have been spent setting up their own online retail website INSTEAD.